KURTULUŞ
Turkey, France, Netherlands, Greece, Saudi Arabia
2026 | 119 min. | Fiction

High in the mountains of Eastern Turkey, two neighboring Kurdish villages face one another: Upper Pingan on a mountain peak and Lower Pingan on the plateau below. Years ago, the Bezari clan was forcibly displaced while their rivals, the Hazerans, became village guards and remained in Upper Pingan. Over the years, the Hazerans grew wealthy by cultivating the fields left behind by the Bezaris in Lower Pingan.

As the armed conflict in the region subsides, the Bezaris return to reclaim their territory. While Sheikh Ferit, the leader of Hazerans, calls for peaceful coexistence, even at the cost of conceding the land, his older brother Mesut takes a far more confrontational stance. Ferit’s position fuels growing resentment among his people, who fear for their land and their future.

Haunted by unsettling dreams he interprets as divine warnings, Mesut openly challenges his brother’s leadership. Caught between the fear of losing all they possess and long-suppressed rage, Hazerans stand at a crossroads: will they be dragged toward tragedy, or will they finally attain salvation?

Directed by: Emin Alper
Written by: Emin Alper
Produced by: Nadir Öperli, Ersan Çongar, Laurent Lavolé, Miléna Poylo, Gilles Sacuto, Stienette Bosklopper, Maarten Swart, Yorgos Tsourgiannis
Cinematography: Ahmet Sesigürgil, Barış Aygen
Editing: Özcan Vardar
Production Design: Nadide Argun van Uden
Costume Design: Gülşah Yüksel
Make-Up & Hair: Kyriaki Melidou
Original Score: Christiaan Verbeek
Sound: Dimitris Kanellopoulos, Nardi van Dijk
Visual Effects: Arnaud Leviez
Casting: Ezgi Baltaş
Cast: Caner Cindoruk (Mesut), Berkay Ateş (Yilmaz), Feyyaz Duman (Seyh Ferit), Naz Göktan (Fatma), Özlem Taş (Gülsüm)

Statement of the director:
In 2009 in a village in the Kurdish region of Türkiye, twelve members of one family raided a wedding and killed 44 people including children and women. This shocking event is the main inspiration of SALVATION. How could a group of people get together to wipe out another group? How could they convince each other and motivate themselves to commit such a heinous act? And how could they plan and take action? In pursuing these haunting questions, I found myself searching for answers not only to this massacre, but also to other mass killings and genocides in history. The result is a narrative that attempts to recreate a massacre in a small microcosm, with references to modern history of colonialism and nationalism.

All the murderous leaders believe that they have a mission, whether it is religious or secular; and most of them believe that they are saving their people. They justify themselves as the chosen ones. And in reality, they are often chosen by their own people. The people who feel desperate, threatened, fragile, and in need of strong leaders bring them to power for the heavy-handed solutions.

In our film, Mesut is a lonely man, haunted by nightmares motivated by sexual jealousy and uneasy with his status, who becomes a sought-after leader for the hardliners. The road to power is paved by them. The only thing needed is supernatural messages which will be delivered to him.

The messages come through dreams (as in the case of most mystic religious leaders). So the dreams in the film are devices through which both Mesut and the villagers convince themselves (in a half-conscious way) that a new leader with a new mission is coming. Secondly, dreams reflect the fear and paranoia of the people. The nightmares start with Mesut but quickly spread to the people, reflecting a primal fear of survival. They create a terrifying ultimatum: if they do not act swiftly, they will be enslaved, or wiped out by the ‘enemy’.

Beyond the narrative, dreams determine the stylistic approach of the film. By mixing subjective and objective points of view and using a spiral of parallel dreams, the film immerses the audience in the world of our anti-heroes. This distinctive style is intended to help us understand the psychological "madness" that makes such a crime possible.

I believe this story has global relevance. We are living through a moment where ethnic hostility, ‘survivalist’ claims over land and the feeling of a constant threat from an ‘enemy’ culminated in the genocide in Palestine. While our film operates on a micro-level, Mesut’s personal mission is essentially the same as the religious mission of settler-colonialism: it is a ‘salvation’ that requires the erasure of others.

This isn’t an isolated phenomenon; it’s a global pattern. We see it in the brutal crackdowns and state-led killings in Iran, where ‘preserving the mission’ justifies the murder of its own people. We see it in the West, where populist leaders scapegoat migrants and minorities to manufacture a sense of national emergency. The rhetoric is always identical: they tell their people that for "us" to survive, "they" must be eliminated. The world is becoming increasingly unsafe under the rule of these erratic, power-obsessed leaders who stand on the brink of dragging not only their own countries, but the entire world, into catastrophe.

Production:
Liman Film
https://www.limanfilm.com

World Sales:
Lucky Number
https://luckynumber.fr/

Press/social media agency:
Manlin Sterner
https://www.manlin.se/