Film review: Home (Yurt) (U)

Muzaffer Ozdemir, best known for his acting in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant, directs this melancholy study of landscape and memory.

A depressed architect, Dogan (Kanbolat Gorkem Arslan) returns to his homeland on a walking tour but finds only crude exploitation: brooks and watermills have been swept aside by hydroelectric plants, and the beautiful stone buildings of old now stand desolate.

Change and decay – it's like Goldsmith's The Deserted Village 250 years on. Arslan, with his thousand-yard stare and mournful moustache, is a compelling presence as the native who can't believe what's happened to his stamping ground: at one point he actually apostrophises a flower, like some Romantic poet, and the spectacle is rather moving. Some will call it slow; I prefer "unhurried".