Kurgudan Olguya: Nuri̇ Bi̇lge Ceylan’in Ahlat Ağaci

This work examines The Wild Pear Tree (2018), the latest work by one of Turkey's best and best-known directors, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. In the paper, after a quick overview of the story of the film, I discuss the fact-fiction dichotomy in relation to The Wild Pear Tree. Following some related theoretical discussions on the issue of fact and fiction terms in cinema and in fictive works, I stress in this paper that the film reflects and also asserts some social facts despite its fictive character. I also dwell on the characters, focusing on the socio-philosophical aspects of the issue. In this film, I argue that, by centring on the human Ceylan touches upon some of the most significant and urgent social problems of our era in Turkey: unemployment, social exclusion, urban-rural and educated-uneducated dichotomies, among others. Focusing on the two main characters, Sinan (played by Dou Demirkol) and dris (played by Murat Cemcir), this study underlines the factual problems sociophilosophically and supports the claim that The Wild Pear Tree, in Ceylan's style, touches on political (as he himself says in an interview) and social problems more than his other films do and thus can be regarded as his most political film.