Why Can't I Be Tarkovsky?

Returning home to help his mother with the orange harvest, Mahir meets an unexpected guest: Halef, who believes he is the reincarnation of Mahir’s long-dead older brother.

Although Cemil is young, he was registered late on the birth certificate. When he reaches the age of puberty, he is married to Gülsüm, who is older than him. But Cemil, who does not know what marriage is, continues to play with his friends on the street.

12-year-old Orhan goes hunting with his friend Hikmet, but their adventure ends with the tragic death of Hikmet. Many years later, Orhan tries to hold on to life, living in one of the ghettos of İstanbul and working in a factory. When the factory lets him go, Orhan starts to work as an entertainer on tour boats on the Bosphorous. His job is to entertain the tourists in costumes of famous historical figures.

The most famous thing about Bitlis, as evoked by the song "Bitlis'te 5 minare" (Five Minarets in Bitlis), is the unique atmosphere of this small city, famous for its parched lands, historical fabric, and tobacco. Medine is an elderly woman living with her three adult children—one an imam at a mosque, one a worker at a cigarette factory, and the other a student at a tutoring center—and is overwhelmed by their troubles. The unexpected return of her fourth child, who was involved in pirated CD sales in Istanbul, escalates the problems and pushes the family into an even more untenable situation. In this distant and suffocating city, everyone—from the wounded cow roaming the hills to the imam at the mosque—has an issue related to pride. As the camera draws closer to its characters and events, it reveals that things are not as they seem, sparking our curiosity to understand the truth.