Bilkent Graduate "Lion of the Future"
Director/writer Seren Yüce, Department of Archeology graduate (‘98), won the Lion of the Future Award at the 67th Venice Film Festival last week. Yüce's film Çoğunluk (Majority) won the coveted award, which is given to a director's debut film. The debut film jury, which included Turkish-German director Fatih Akın, Nina Lath Gupta, Stanley Kwan, Samuel Maoz, and Jasmine Trinca, decided unanimously to give the award to Yüce.
The film tells the story of a middle-class young man who rebels against his father's authority and seeks a romance with a Kurdish woman. Yüce's moral tale draws from the example of today's Turkish youth and the timeless shadow of fathers over sons.
In an interview with Natasha Senjanovich following the award ceremony, Yüce commented on some themes in his work. According to him, the film's slow pace reflects the oppression of the passing of time when nothing really changes. Yüce wanted to imitate a real-life situation and not create a world where his characters could not exist. He also wanted emphasize that despite the real economic and social growth in Turkey, discrimination still exists.
Seren Yüce worked as an assistant to Özer Kızıltan on Takva: A Man's Fear of God (2004) and to Fatih Akin on The Edge of Heaven (2007). The Majority (2010) is his feature directorial debut.