The Long Way Home

Inhospitable at the best of times the snowcovered mountainscapes of Eastern Anatolia constituted a fatal frontier for many war exiles after the battle of Sarikamish in 1915 and provides a canvas laced with beauty and threat for this bonechilling survival yarn the superb debut feature of Alphan Eşeli Starting out with three characters a refugee mother and daughter and their grizzled guide the film traces their daunting trek across this barren terrain to safety with the Russians encroaching and other stragglers including a pair of wounded frostbitten Ottoman soldiers all orbiting the same burntout village they find in their path Puncturing its aura of ghostly impasse with some shocking narrative reversals and constantly prickling with the mutual dread of strangers in gruelling extremes the movie stakes out hugely credible ground next to established Eastern Front war classics In the Fog Come and See while remaining thoroughly its own beast Source LFF programme