Atilla Türköz

A gang of swindlers called Bukalemun A.Ş. comes to Kısmetli under the pretext of establishing a chameleon farm. They claim that chameleon oil will be extracted from the farm and sold to the medical and cosmetics industries. The swindlers have brought with them a rare chameleon, the last of its kind, but in order for it to reproduce and multiply, they need to find a male chameleon. The elderly residents of Kısmetli eagerly begin searching for chameleons in hopes of becoming wealthy. Meanwhile, funds are being collected for the farm. However, everything changes when İsmet, a man of questionable sanity, intervenes.

A triptych of literary adaptations explores past, present and future in rural Turkey. “Düne Özlem” (from Hulki Aktunç’s Bir Yergöstericinin Hayatı): A once-famed traveling critic returns after years to the cinema that launched his career—and finds it unrecognizably transformed. “Bugüne Özlem” (from Kemal Tahir’s Arabacı): A horse-drawn cart driver picks up two stranger women en route to a village—unaware they intend to marry him off to their spinster relative. “Yarına Özlem” (from Zeyyat Selimoğlu’s Bıldırcınlar): An old captain haunted by a fatal shipwreck readies quail-hunting with his grandson, even as his daughter-in-law waits in vain for her migrant husband to return from Germany. Each segment poignantly probes longing— for what was, what is, and what might yet come.