Inter Yapim is in post-production on brutal revenge saga “Sayara,” directed by Turkish horror genre specialist Can Evrenol, whose film “Baskin” premiered in TIFF’s Midnight Madness section.
The Istanbul-based company has dropped a teaser for “Sayara,” which is being packaged as both a four-episode miniseries and a dark 90-minute horror thriller. PvNew has been given an exclusive first look above.
“Sayara” is the moniker of the title character described in promotional materials as a “brooding femme fatale from Turkmenistan.” Sayara works as a cleaning lady in one of Istanbul’s gyms. The revenge plot kicks in when her older sister, Yonca, is raped and killed by Barış – the spoiled owner of the gym, with whom Yonca has an illicit affair – and his three friends. Barış’ father is a member of Parliament who pulls strings, so her death is ruled a suicide in court. But Sayara’s father is Shamil Hskaov, Turkmenistan’s former special operations commander and a Soviet Sambo champion, who has trained Sayara for close combat using this martial art. She vows to carry out her own justice.
“Horror cinema is the epitome of protest art, but only when it’s anti-status quo. I made ‘Sayara’ with the intention of delivering a bold scream — a low-budget shocker of transgression and excess — in the midst of a cultural landscape increasingly suffocated by both official and self-censorship,” said Evrenol in his director’s statement. “The film is a unique, weird crossbreed: half grappling-based martial arts flick, half obsessive toxic relationship movie from hell. I strive to make my films as personal as possible.”
“Creating a martial arts-based revenge film has been a lifelong dream of mine. I found the right motivation for this script through the real-life wave of unending femicides in Turkey. I aimed to make a brutal little genre film where I could reflect on the countless unsolved crimes that plague our collective consciousness as a nation, both socially and politically,” Evrenol added.
As for how the director got his inspiration: “During my after-work hours rolling on the jiu-jitsu mat, I had this idea of a highly skilled but super-introverted femme fatale immigrant from Turkmenistan silently mopping the floor in an uptown gym, a place that is both sexy and reeks of social class conflict,” Evrenol said. “There are many immigrant workers in Turkey from the Turkic nations, but Turkmenistan is known for two things: being almost second to North Korea in its surrealness and having great sambo fighters.”
“Expect your skull to be shattered, your heart to be broken, and your eyeballs smashed under Sayara’s boots,” Evrenol concluded.
