Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2018: #11. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Wild Pear Tree

Wild Pear Tree

Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns with his first project since winning the Palme d’Or for 2014’s Winter Sleep. His eighth film, Wild Pear Tree, is currently in post-production, and focuses on writer Sinan (Hazar Ergüçlü) who returns home to his native village to gather his resources and realize his dream of being published. However, his father’s debts become a point of contention, eventually thwarting his son’s dreams. The plot promises a return to more simplistic, human melodramas for Ceylan, whose last two features, including 2011’s magnificent Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, have grown into epic-sized, existential exercises. While Ceylan’s first two films premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, he has competed five times for the Palme d’Or, winning Grand Prize of the Jury in 2003 for Distant, the FIPRESCI Prize in 2006 for Climates, Best Director for Three Monkeys in 2008, and a second Grand Prize of the Jury for 2011’s Anatolia before taking home the top prize in 2014.

Release Date/Prediction: Without a doubt, Ceylan’s latest will be in competition at Cannes 2018.