Interview: Nehir Tuna – Dormitory (Yurt)

For his feature debut, Turkish filmmaker Nehir Tuna climbs back into his personal space to explore friendship, isolation and the  diverging philosophical and religious beliefs of the mid-90s Turkey with the autobiographical Dormitory (aka Yurt). Exploring the rather colorless existence Ahmet, a young teen who is slightly naive but nonetheless rebellious in his pursuit for perspective in a world filled with dichotomy and contradictions. In this portrait, Tuna gazes inquisitively at the way division tends to perpetuate further divisions, while making a concerted effort to extinguish individual spirit.

After a decade plus filmography of working in the short film form, Nehir Tuna had the opportunity to workshop the screenplay for Dormitory at the 2019 Sundance Screenwriters Lab and re-teamed with players on his previous works for a feature that was selected for the 2023 Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti section. I had the opportunity to sit down with the filmmaker during the festival, where we discussed working in different colors and the aspect ratio, the dynamics of the different type of relationships we find here and the multi-dimensionality of the splintered character set.