Sibel: dir Çagla Zencirci, Guillaume Giovanetti (2018)

The French-Turkish couple Çagla Zencirci and Guillaume Giovanetti have directed several films together, and Sibel – their third feature – is a film festival favourite.  Sibel is  a mute, but she communicates by using the ancestral whistled language of the area. Rejected by her fellow villagers, she relentlessly hunts down a wolf that is said to be prowling in the neighbouring forest, sparking off fears and fantasies among the village women; she crosses path with a fugitive, the first person to take a fresh look at her … Sibel weaves together folklore, gender roles and a fitful kind of emancipation in the story of a young woman desperate to counter the ostracism of her fellow villager in a secluded part of the mountains of Turkey. In Turkish with English subtitles.