By Nural Sümbültepe
The Toronto International Film Festival is presenting 12 films in its Platform program, which champions exceptional directorial vision. It’s TIFF’s sole competitive section, with five jurors (Pablo Trapero, Amma Asante, Sylvia Chang, Luc Déry, and Albert Lee) determining which filmmaker will take home the $20,000 cash prize.
One of those films is Djinn Wedding, a family drama set in a remote Anatolian village. Turkish director Ferit Karahan spoke to Toronto Spark contributor Nural Sümbültepe in advance of the film’s world premiere at TIFF.
Nural Sümbültepe: Last night, you attended the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), one of the top and largest publicly attended festivals in the world. Your film will compete in this festival. Can you share your first impressions and feelings about the competition?
Ferit Karahan: Actually, I couldn’t attend the opening of the festival. But it is very exciting for me to be in Toronto and to take part in TIFF’s Platform Competition with Djinn Wedding. Toronto is one of the most important festivals in the world, and competing in a section like Platform, which focuses on directors’ cinema and where a very limited number of films are selected, is very valuable for the journey of the film.
I don’t think of festivals only in terms of awards or competitions. You work on a film for years with a very small crew. Then one day the film is no longer only yours and is seen by hundreds of people from other cultures in different parts of the world. That’s what I find very really exciting.
Djinn Wedding has emerged from a familiar local geography, a world that I know very well, but it deals with universal issues such as loss, mourning, guilt, family, and the burdens left to us from the past. What I am most curious about in Toronto is how audiences from so many different cultures will relate to the film. For now, the atmosphere of the festival and the interest shown in the film make me very happy. The real excitement will be the moment when we will watch the film with the audience for the first time at its world premiere.
Nural Sümbültepe: We had a conversation about your film Brother’s Keeper four years ago. It was a very successful production, and this film is also very impressive. In Brother’s Keeper, you drew the story from your own life, from a world you knew very well. Does the character of Ceren have any connection with your real life or were you inspired by your own life or experiences while creating the character of the four siblings?
Ferit Karahan: Autobiography is not just about the events that happened to you; the images, sounds, fears, and rituals of the world you grew up in are also part of your autobiography. I grew up in a small village and then went to a boarding school. Therefore, there are many images and testimonies in the film that I carry from my childhood. For example, the scene where the mother is put in the cauldron comes directly from my childhood. I was nine years old. The brother of a neighbour who had cancer and was now dying came to us and asked for a big cauldron. The man was in a lot of pain; they were putting him in hot water to relieve his pain a little. At that time, I could not fully grasp what this meant, but the image remained with me. The scene where the children block the wedding convoy is the same. It was a scene I witnessed at my brother’s wedding.
Nural Sümbültepe: While watching your film, I was reminded of Gabriel García Márquez’s book One Hundred Years of Solitude. The novel is often associated with magical realism, and I felt a similar sensibility in your film, Djinn Wedding. There is also a striking pattern of repetition in García Márquez’s novel, with certain characters, events, and patterns recurring across seven generations. In your film, I noticed a similar use of repetition, with certain elements and dialogues recurring across three generations. Of course, this may be a coincidence, but could you talk about the role of magical realism in Djinn Wedding and the significance of this repetition across generations?
Ferit Karahan: The reality in the Middle East today is so harsh, sometimes so irrational, that even I need surreal elements when I tell them to my child. I do this not to lighten or escape from reality, but on the contrary, to make that reality bearable. Maybe this is where my relationship with magical realism began. Djinn, dreams, myths or invisible things are not alternatives to reality for me; they are another layer of reality. Sometimes naked realism is not enough to explain something. In order to explain the invisible, it is necessary to expand the boundaries of reality a little.
The recurrence of images such as meteors, horses, and apples at certain moments in the film is also related to this. But I don’t want to describe their meanings too much. Because for me, an image loses some of its power as soon as it starts to be explained. The audience will already feel why all these phenomena exist in the film.
In fact, with Djinn Wedding, I feel that I have found something that brings me closer to a cinematic language that I have been looking for for a long time. This is a language where reality and the surreal, personal memory and social memory, myths and fables can stand side by side with today’s world.
Nural Sümbültepe: In the film, women from three generations are shown eating soil. Is this open to interpretation or would you like to comment?
Ferit Karahan: I think it’s very clear. There is also an issue of ownership underlying this. The image of eating soil emerged partly from this idea. We are accustomed to thinking of land as something that can be owned. But throughout the film, I question the opposite: perhaps we are the ones who belong to the land. People want to incorporate into their bodies the things they believe they possess. But this is also a tragic endeavour. Because no matter how much soil you eat, you can never own the land. In the end, it is the human being who is once again a part of the land. At the end of the day, it is the human being who is a part of the land.
There is also the resistance side of this. The women who eat the soil in the film do not experience it as a disease or superstition. This is a form of silent resistance they develop in a world that they cannot change or where they cannot speak. When they cannot say anything about the life that has been taken away from them, only their bodies remain. They turn their bodies into a tool of expression. That’s why eating soil is not just a metaphor for me; it is also a form of objection built on the body.
Nural Sümbültepe: We watch constant arguments, fights, and aggression between men. Even at the wedding, when we are driving the bride, about the wedding expenses, etc. The reason for these is usually either women or money. Is everyone possessed by the djinn?
Ferit Karahan: I don’t think of djinns in the films as beings that come from outside and take over people. I’m more interested in the darkness that people carry within themselves and sometimes pass it on from generation to generation.
For me, the djinn represents something within a person that they do not want to see or acknowledge in themselves: suppressed desires, fears, guilt, anger, things they did in the past or things they failed to do. When people refuse to confront these parts of themselves, they need to place them somewhere outside themselves. Sometimes they call it fate, sometimes a curse, sometimes a demon.
That is why I am less interested in whether the djinn truly exists in the film. Perhaps what we call a djinn is the return of a past we cannot confront, taking another form. Something that is hidden within a family does not disappear simply because it is not spoken about. On the contrary, it seeps into children, relationships, and even subsequent generations. These are the djinns that truly interest me in the film.
Perhaps this is why the question posed at the beginning of the film remains important to me: Can a person who refuses to confront their own darkness truly change their destiny?
Nural Sümbültepe: There are so many elements that penetrate our subconscious, for example, the character Deniz studying genetics at university, melons appearing twice, the horse on the necklace twice, dinosaurs. Should we look for messages for the subconscious under these elements and metaphors?
Ferit Karahan: It seems a little strange to me to separate these phenomena so precisely into the conscious and the unconscious. I think there is more of a single consciousness. In this respect, I am closer to the deconstructionists.
There are recurring elements in the film, such as meteorites, horses, melons, dinosaurs, and genetics, but I never thought of them as codes or subconscious messages that the audience needed to decipher. Rather, they form the film’s own memory. Just as in human memory, an image can reappear years later in a different context, and the meaning it had when we first encountered it may no longer be the same.
Although I have my own interpretation of each of these elements, I don’t want to fix their meanings too firmly, whether it is the horses, the melons, or the other recurring images. As soon as you begin to explain an image, you limit its possible meanings. I find it more valuable that these images resonate with one another throughout the film, sometimes creating invisible connections between the past and the present.
The audience does not necessarily have to decipher them. Sometimes, the emotion an image leaves you with is more important than knowing what it means. Because films are ultimately more of an emotional experience than an intellectual exercise.
Nural Sümbültepe: You divided the film into three parts: Angels, Djinns, and Chains. I understand Djinn and Chains, but are Angels meant to be children or do you prefer to leave that open to interpretation? You wrote this screenplay. What drew you to such a distinct mix of elements like dinosaurs, meteorites, horses, melons, devils, heaven, and hell?
Ferit Karahan: Angels are not directly children. For me, “Angels” represent more of the last moment of childhood. That short period when the child can still trust the world, his family, and adults. With the death of the mother in the film, the four siblings do not only lose their mother; they also lose the world in which they can stay as children. That’s why the first part is called “Angels”.
“Djinns”, on the other hand, are the things that emerge afterward. The unexamined past, our suppressed guilt, fears, and the unspoken matters within a family do not disappear; they return in other forms. For me, that is what they represent.
“Chains” is about all of this being passed down to the next generation. After a while, we begin to mistake the things we inherit from our past, family, and society for our own character, even our destiny. In my opinion, the heaviest chain is the one we are unaware of. Sometimes people repeat not their destiny, but the life they inherit.
Nural Sümbültepe: The cinematography really elevates your film and it pairs beautifully with such seamless editing. Since you also wrote the screenplay, could you speak about how you balance these three pillars; screenplay, cinematography, and editing?
Ferit Karahan: I don’t separate screenplay, cinematography, and editing from one another. Even while writing the film, I begin to think about the space, the time, and how the camera will move within that time. Especially in a film like Djinn Wedding, which spans three different eras, my primary concern was to make time felt through space, rather than just showing years passing by.
In the film, we return to the same houses, the same roads, and the same mountains years later. People change, children grow up, some die, but the space remains. That is why Erzincan is not just a backdrop where the film takes place; it is a memory that outlives the people. The mountains, rivers, roads, and houses bear witness to the past of all these individuals. In a sense, time accumulates upon the space.
This is also why we use long and single takes. When you shoot a scene without cutting it into too many pieces, time itself becomes a part of the scene. Instead of directing the actor through cuts like close-ups and reverse-shots, I want them to exist within the space, the other actors, and time itself. The audience doesn’t just watch the event; they are forced to live inside that event for a while. For me, that is where the true power of the long take lies.
For this reason, editing was not merely about joining shots together. The film has three different eras, but I didn’t want them to feel like three completely separate chapters. I wanted the past to seep into the present, and for the same space and sometimes the exact same movements to reappear in different ways years later. Because in this film, time does not move linearly.
Nural Sümbültepe: The cast is quite extensive and we, people from Türkiye, know most of them very well. Some of them are even highly renowned on a global scale. It is a stellar and successful ensemble. Can you speak about this casting process?
Ferit Karahan: When I choose actors, I look more at whether there is an unexplored territory within that actor. Sometimes you have been watching an actor for years, but you sense a side of their face, voice, or body that you have never encountered in cinema before. For me, that is what’s exciting: rather than repeating what I already know, discovering something with the actor that we don’t know yet. That is what drew me to Demet, Kaan, İlhan, Helin, and Sarp. I find it far more interesting to reveal something that is already there but hasn’t been seen by the camera yet, rather than transforming an actor into someone else.
Consequently, their fan bases were not a criterion for my selection. In fact, casting works a bit in reverse for me: millions of people might know an actor, but my concern is what remains unrecognized in that face.
Nural Sümbültepe: Which directors from Türkiye and abroad have you been most influenced by? Which directors do you like?
Ferit Karahan: Naturally, there are directors who have influenced my cinema and whose films I love deeply. However, I see myself as a director who is nourished much more by literature than by cinema. When I watch a film, I can’t help but fall under the influence of its visual world, rhythm, or style of storytelling. In literature, the exact opposite happens; what I read transforms into my own images in my mind. That is why, as a creator, I think literature opens up a wider and freer space for me.
The relationship that writers like Gabriel García Márquez, Borges, Juan Rulfo, and Faulkner establish with time, memory, and reality has nourished me more than many cinematic influences. When it comes to cinema, I deeply admire how visionaries like Tarkovsky and Kiarostami engage with the world and the concept of time. Yet, instead of directly modelling myself after any single filmmaker, I am drawn to the diverse ways different artists perceive reality. Ultimately, I believe all these influences must be forgotten for the film to find its own voice.
Nural Sümbültepe: What awaits Djinn Wedding after its run at TIFF?
Ferit Karahan: Toronto (TIFF) is the film’s world premiere and the film’s first real encounter with the audience. After that, we started to receive invitations from festivals around the world, and it looks like a long festival journey lies ahead of us. But for me, what is at least as important as this festival journey is the film meeting with the audience in Türkiye. Djinn Wedding will be released in Turkey on October 30. I am especially curious to watch the film in our own country, alongside an audience that recognizes its geography and emotions from an entirely different, personal perspective.
Nural Sümbültepe: Are there plans for a new film on the horizon these days, or are you just going to take a breath and enjoy the festival run of Djinn Wedding?
Ferit Karahan: For now, there is no concrete new film on the horizon. Djinn Wedding was a very long and intense process; from writing to editing, I lived inside this film for years. That’s why I don’t want to rush straight into a new story. For a while, I want to observe and enjoy this film’s journey, witness its encounters with the audience, and let my mind to reset.
Starting a new film simply for the sake of ‘making the next movie’ doesn’t feel right to me. I find that when an issue truly troubles me and haunts me, I naturally start thinking and writing around it anyway. For now, I’m waiting for that next story to find me.
The Toronto International Film Festival will present three more screenings of Djinn Wedding. The first is at 9 p.m. on Wednesday (September 16) at TIFF Lightbox. The other two screenings are at Scotiabank Theatre Toronto at 12:25 p.m. on Thursday (September 17) and 9 p.m. on Friday (September 18). For tickets and more information, visit the TIFF website.
Nural Sümbültepe is a B.C. teacher. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
