Blind Whistle
When his mother dies, Münir finds the note she left behind: on Eid al-Adha, he is to kill the sacrificial animal with his own hands. He has never become the man his older brother is, nor the father his son can look up to, and now he faces failing her too. He prepares in secret, steering talk at the barbershop towards the ritual and confiding in his mother at her grave. In the garden, the animal already wears his name in red paint. At night, a shepherd called İbrahim appears behind a flock with candles tied to their horns, a man who holds a knife the way Münir never could. But the voice that will not let him go is his mother's, and the feast is coming...
Producers' note
*Blind Whistle *refuses to resolve its central tension into pure tragedy or pure comedy, and I think that refusal is exactly its strength, both artistically and commercially. Münir's failure to become the man his family expects is rooted in a specific Anatolian town; the pressure behind it is not, and the magical realism running through the script gives that pressure a visual language that travels. The humour is what lets an audience sit with him, and it is fragile: it survives throughcasting and timing, not coverage.
That is where the budget goes: a long casting process, rehearsal before the shoot, and a schedule built shot by shot rather than around extensive coverage. This is a story set at the Feast of Sacrifice, so animals are in the film throughout, from the one waiting in Münir's garden to a flock moving at night with candles on their horns. They require handlers, permits, night shooting days and a controlled set.
The film is produced by Remo Films (Türkiye), with Sineaktif (Türkiye) and Orphée Films (France) as co-producers, both attached at the letter of intent stage. 25% of the budget is committed and a national fund application is pending. Financing continues through 2027, with principal photography in summer 2028 in Ankara province and delivery in autumn 2028.
Blind Whistle is a film from Türkiye that is funny, and that alone sets it apart on a circuit that expects austerity from the region. For European arthouse viewers it belongs to the deadpan, static-camera tradition of Nordic tragicomedy, a register that has repeatedly carried small films out of small territories.
Across Türkiye, the Mediterranean, the Balkans and the Middle East, the grammar of family, faith and the small town is legible without translation, and at home the film reaches beyond the festival audience. The Turkish diaspora in Europe is a market in itself, not a festival stop. Outreach combines festival positioning with targeted press, cultural institutes and diaspora cinemas.
Director's note
I come from Ağrı, in Eastern Anatolia, where 'Adam etme' – "the work of making a man of a boy" – is done by fathers and uncles, by ritual, and by the meat of holiday sacrifice. Münir, the fifty-year-old barber at the heart of Blind Whistle, never quite finished becoming one.
The film began with a single image: Münir folded double inside a plastic basin under his mother's bed, hiding from the world. I have known this man all my life, in family, in neighbours, in myself. A left-handed boy in a right-handed world, he has stayed close to his mother's skirts, taking refuge in his scissors and the whistle he learned as a child. I found him again in Eyüp Tosun's short story "Münir Bey", which carries adam etme with humour.
When Mukadder dies, she leaves her son a written demand: slaughter the sacrificial animal with your own hand at Eid al-Adha. It is a last attempt at making a man of the son she sheltered for fifty years, and a test he cannot pass: she had already paid for the animal. She bought in advance the very trial he would fail.
Blind Whistle is a tragicomedy because Münir's situation is both absurd and unbearable. It uses magical realism because its rules are not those of the real world: a stranger called İbrahim becomes Münir's double, a holy fool herding animals with candles on their horns.I plan to shoot in Ankara, beside the Hirfanlı Dam, an unexpected blue rising out of the steppe. The camera stays still and distant, in the manner of Kaurismäki and Roy Andersson, in a town that is religious and absurd, tender and cornered, full of jokes that hurt.
What matters most is that Münir answers her. Not with the knife, and not with a refusal, but with the tools of his own life, a third way between obedience and silence. I believe many of us are looking for that third way.
Biography
Ramazan Kılıç is a screenwriter, director and producer from Ağrı, in Eastern Anatolia, and a member of the European Film Academy. His short films The School Bus and Things Unheard Of both premiered at Clermont-Ferrand, where Things Unheard Of received a Jury Special Mention. As a producer, his short The Moisture premiered in Orizzonti at Venice and won the Bruce Corwin Award at Santa Barbara. He runs Remo Films. Blind Whistle is his debut feature.
Biography
She has a bachelor's degree in cinema and television and holds a double major diploma in sociology. She completed her Master's degree in Directing Film and TV at Bournemouth University in the UK. She still works at TRT’s digital platform, Tabii. She continues to produce independent film projects via Orange Point Studio, which she co-founded.