In a village in the south east of Turkey, Mahmut wants to divorce his newly-wed wife. At the same time, his sister Zeynep enrols in an open high school and takes on a job in a factory. Against her father’s wishes, she wants to leave the village and ultimately go to university. The siblings’ demands become the center of conflict in their conservative family and community, who are not used to what Mahmut and Zeynep strive for. Intimately captured by their elder brother Ahmet Necdet Cupur, who left the village twenty years ago to pursue his studies, LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES is a story of clashes between generations, between the past and the present.

Direction: Ahmet Necdet Çupur

Script: Ahmet Necdet Çupur

Production: Delphine Morel

Co-Production: Nadir Öperli, Anke Petersen

Cinematography: Ahmet Necdet Çupur, Lucie Baudinaud

Editing: Mathilde Van de Moortel

Sound: Ahmet Necdet Çupur, Gürkan Özkaya, Johannes Grehl

Original Score: Paradox Paradise

Original Title: LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES

Original Languages: Turkish, Arabic

Film Production Countries: France, Türkiye, Germany

Website: https://www.lesenfantsterriblesfilm.com/

Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/lesenfantsterriblesfilm

Statement of the Director/s
Everything began when my brother Mahmut took a decision to divorce
his newly wed wife and my sister Zeynep was ready to end her engagement in 2017. I took my camera and went back to the village.

My intention was to film my siblings and the people around them while
seeking a solution. I thought things would be easier by looking through
the lens of a camera as if what I film was not the real life but a filmmaker’s fantasy world.

After a trial period realizing the outcomes of documenting these
events, I followed my siblings’ on-going story for over three years until
2020. I stayed behind the camera and rarely interacted with them
though my presence as the eldest son of this family was felt.
I travelled back to the village alone with little image and sound
equipment to capture the true intimacy. In a way, I was in a privileged
position to film my siblings, parents and kinsmen for they have let me
dwell into their lives. I even felt like they have been waiting for
someone to listen to them. I wasn’t expecting them to be that open to
be filmed at any moment. For them, I was a person who was listening
with a camera and I didn’t want to break this coherence. To give the
camera a subjective perspective, I placed it as if it was my eyes.
I tried to create a fluid structure of telling in the film wishing to follow a
logic of revealing information, that is, beginning with the effects
on the individuals and zooming out towards the causes, the
origins.

I tried hard not to cast any moral judgment on the events; instead I
wanted to let the events reveal their own meanings. Principally, I took
my siblings, Mahmut and Zeynep’s point of views on their lives, how
they seek a solution while still keeping the family ties intact.
I looked for images to create meanings of the interior conflicts. I tried
to have more than just faces and expressions. I wanted to capture
these “new individuals” feelings, their helplessness while trying to
create their own mode of life.

Biography of the Director/s
Ahmet Necdet Çupur was born in 1984 in Hatay, a village situated by the Syrian border in Turkey. He quit his home at the age of thirteen moving to Antakya to pursue schooling. He obtained a civil engineering diploma and worked three years in Iraq and Afghanistan during the war. In one of his journeys, he shot a short film in Romania and decided to be a filmmaker. He left his engineering job and moved to Paris.

Two years after his arrival, he obtained funds from CNC and a pre-purchase from France 2 TV channel for his short film, LATIN BABYLON. The year he completed his film, he returned back to his natal village, after twenty years of absence, with an idea of shooting a documentary about his family. He managed to get national funds from France (le CNC, la Scam) to write this documentary film. He carries on living and developing his projects in Paris.

LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES is his first feature-length documentary.

Filmography of the Director/s
2021 LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES, documentary
2017 LATIN BABYLON, short
2015 THE BOY AND THE BIKE, short
2014 EXPERIENCE, short
2014 ALLEY DANCER, short

Awards Won
Special Jury Award at Visions du Réel 2021

Production Company:
TS Productions
Delphine Morel
3 Cité d’Hauteville
Paris, 75010, France
E-Mail: [email protected]
Phone: +33 1 53 10 24 00
Website: http://tsproductions.fr/

JYOTI Film
Anke Petersen
Lange Reihe 113
Hamburg, 20099 , Germany
E-Mail: [email protected]
Phone: +49 40 48 4940
Website: https://www.jyotifilm.de/

Liman Film
Nadir Öperli
Özoğul Sokak No: 18
Cihangir Beyoğlu İstanbul, 12 34427 , Türkiye
E-Mail: [email protected]
Phone: +90 533 661 77 37
Website: https://limanfilm.com/

World Sales:
Deckert Distribution
Gottschedstr. 18
Leipzig, 04109, Germany
E-Mail: [email protected]
Phone: +49 341 2156638
Website: https://deckert-distribution.com/