JOURNEY ON THE HOUR HAND (AKREBIN YOLCULUGU) Official Competition

A double winner for best film and best direction in
the Istanbul fest’s national competition, this existential
mystery tale about a clock mender who arrives in a
village where time has stopped has a jewel-like
perfection …
When a stranger hands the clockmender a key to a
mysterious clock tower, he heads off to repair it. Esra, the
owner, is a dark lady who spends her time weaving cloth
on a loom and mourning her dead daughter. She seduces
the enamored clockmender, ignoring the brooding
suspicions of her hunter-husband.
Strange things start happening to Kerem. He
witnesses a murder on a lake, but the corpse disappears.
Repairing the clock (which stopped when the little girl
died), Kerem discovers there was a previous mender who
had an affair with Esra and mysteriously disappeared …
The plot could be a Patricia Highsmith mystery,
except for Kavur’s preoccupation with symbols and
archetypes. One of these is certainly the boarding house
where Kerem finds lodging, inhabited by mute parrots,
blind musicians and an occasional overdressed dwarf…
– Deborah Young, VARIETY.