In the rural area around the Anatolian town of Keskin, the local prosecutor, police commissar, and doctor lead a search for a victim of a murder to whom a suspect named Kenan and his mentally challenged brother confessed. However, the search is proving more difficult than expected as Kenan is fuzzy as to the body's exact location. As the group continues looking, its members can't help but chat among themselves about both trivia and their deepest concerns in an investigation that is proving more trying than any of them expected.
Written by
Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Plot Synopsis:
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Through the night, three cars carry a small group of men police officers, a doctor, a prosecutor, grave diggers, gendarmerie forces, and two brothers, homicide suspects around in the rural surroundings of the Anatolian town Keskin, in search of a buried body. Kenan, one of the suspects, leads them from one water fountain to another; at the time of the crime he was intoxicated and he cannot recall where he and his mentally challenged brother buried the body. The darkness and visual indistinctness of the landscape do not help; each spot looks the same as the others.
Meanwhile the men discuss a variety of topics, such as yoghurt, lamb chops, urination, family, spouses, ex-wives, death, suicide, hierarchy, bureaucracy, ethics, and their jobs.
Before dawn the prosecutor gets hungry, and the group stops at a nearby village to eat. After the meal Kenan reveals what happened the night of the killing while drunk he let slip the secret that the victim's son was actually his, and then things got ugly.
Daylight breaks. The body is found and taken to the local hospital for autopsy. The mother and son (perhaps 12 years old) are waiting outside the hospital. The son throws a stone at Kenan hitting him between the eyes. Kenan cries.
The prosecutor invites the victim's wife to identify the body in the hospital morgue, files the necessary paperwork, and departs, leaving the doctor to perform the autopsy. The autopsy reveals the presence of soil in the lungs, implying that the victim had been buried alive, but the doctor intentionally omits that from the report. This may allow the offenders to get away with lesser charges, but it will also spare the victim's wife and stepson from further grief.
The movie ends with a shot from the doctor's perspective of the mother and son in the distance walking away with the husband's belongings. The son sees that a soccer ball has been accidentally kicked far from a schoolyard and he runs and retrieves it and kicks it back to the children in the yard. He then runs back to his mother.
Ercan Kesal, playing the Mukhtar in the movie, is a medical doctor in his real life. His real life experience as a doctor in the Anatolian town where the movie was also shot had inspired the director and the scriptwriter, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, to make the movie.
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The anecdote about the sudden death of a woman told by prosecutor Nusret and the doctor's deduction come from the short story The Examining Magistrate by Russian writer Anton Chekhov.
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The movie premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival where it was a co-winner of the Grand Prix.
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Turkey's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards 2012.
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The word Anatolia means East, originally referring to the Ionian colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor
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While Arab and the doctor chat during the investigation, doctor sits in the front seat of the car (with the car door open, facing the field). The next scene, we see the doctor from the back, facing the field while standing. After that, while Arab is eating apple, we see doctor sitting in the front seat again. As they keep talking, it cuts to wide angle shot where we see the doctor standing again.
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Naci speaks to his wife on the mobile phone. When his wife hangs up angrily, a dial tone is heard. No dial tone is heard on mobile phones.
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Once the deceased body is discovered you can see the "corpse's" thumb briefly twitch.
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child|police|dead body|steppe|doctor|murder|prosecutor|place name in title|police investigation|rigor mortis|small city|provincial life|losing temper|murder confession|sleepless night|evidence tampering|withholding evidence|suspected suicide|mortuary|human autopsy|autopsy room|forensic evidence|forensic|reference to clark gable|identifying dead body|covering a dead body|carrying a dead body|dead body laid out on a table|digging up a dead body|barren land|lighting someone's cigarette|daughter|disturbing vision|wind|wind gust|lamb|power outage|conversation in car|supper|depopulation|rural setting|town mayor|mayor|countryside|attorney|stormy night|searching a dead body|police convoy|school|yogurt|laptop|dog|apple|village|reference to anton chekhov|car|eating|night|turkey the country|anatolia|barking dog|trip|policeman|buried alive|blood|autopsy|dead body in a car trunk|title spoken by character|
Bulgaria (Bulgarian title): ˜мало едно в€еме в надола
Brazil: Era uma Vez na Anatolia
Canada (French title): Il tait une fois en Anatolie
Czech Republic (festival title): Tenkrt v Anatolii
Germany (TV title): Es war einmal in Anatolien
Germany: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Denmark: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Spain: rase una vez en Anatolia
France: Il tait une fois en Anatolie
Greece (transliterated ISO-LATIN-1 title): Kapote stin Anatolia
Greece: šά€ο„ε ƒ„ην ‘να„ολία
Hungary: Egyszer volt, hol nem volt Anatliban
Israel (Hebrew title): Hayou zmanim be'Anatolia
Italy: C'era una volta in Anatolia
Poland: Pewnego razu w Anatolii
Portugal: Era Uma Vez na Anatlia
Romania: A fost odata n Anatolia
Russia: žднажд‹ в на‚олии
Sweden: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Turkey (working title) (Turkish title): Bir Zamanlar Anadolu
World-wide (English title): Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Movie Details:
MOVIE
