Belonging

Belonging

2019 · 71 min · ★ 5.8 · Crime, Drama

A murder investigation is flipped inside out in Burak Çevik's second feature, a spellbinding and surprising work that questions whether we can ever truly understand criminal motives. We begin in the present as an unseen narrator recounts the assassination of his lover's disapproving mother, accompanied by hauntingly vacant images of urban alienation and garish city lights; we then flash back to witness the first encounter between the lovers-turned-accomplices, their mutual attraction and world-weariness emerging across a sleepless night and morning after. Çevik imbues the proceedings with a stylistic confidence and willingness to bend the conventions of cinematic form to arrive at a complex, gripping double meditation on love and death.

Directed by Burak Çevik · Written by Burak Çevik

Your Rating

Where to Watch

Streaming

Cast

Eylül Su Sapan Pelin
Çağlar Yalçınkaya Onur

Make it a double feature

2h 42m together

Belonging

Between Two Dawns

Both from Burak Çevik.

More from Burak ÇevikSee all →

While Cursed by Specters

While Cursed by Specters · 2020

While Cursed by Specters

Burak Çevik’s film reworks the stark black-and-white compositions of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s 1984 film Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations) in which German locations stand in for the imagined country of Kafka’s unfinished novel, Amerika. Here, however, depopulated interiors and desolate outdoor spaces carry the phantasmic traces of humanity—voices, shadows, photographs, cars—but never let them appear, suggesting a world in which all connections to the social have come untethered.

Hesitation Wound

Hesitation Wound · 2024

Hesitation Wound

A criminal lawyer Canan, divides her time in the courthouse and mother's hospital bed at night. She has to make a moral choice that will affect lives of her mother, judge and murder suspect client.

Between Two Dawns

Between Two Dawns · 2021

Between Two Dawns

After a worker is severely injured in their family business, Kadir is forced into making a moral decision, which will have an impact on his dreams, his family, and the life of injured worker’s wife

The List of Those Who Love Me

The List of Those Who Love Me · 2022

The List of Those Who Love Me

Yılmaz is the dealer and close friends of famous filmmakers and actors. With the increasing drug operations in Istanbul, Yılmaz is getting paranoid about not being loved by them anymore. This paranoia makes him take bigger risks day by day and he will be destroyed by the desire for being loved.

A Woman Escapes

A Woman Escapes · 2022

A Woman Escapes

Audrey lives alone in Paris after moving there to tend to the home of her recently deceased friend, Juliane. Moving through the days without motivation or a sense of purpose, she tries to re-establish her footing in the world by beginning video correspondences with two filmmakers—Burak, who lives in Istanbul, and Blake, who lives in Toronto. This exchange of words and footage initiates a healing process, but the nature of the interaction is not what it seems.

Distant Constellation

Distant Constellation · 2017

Distant Constellation

MovieDocumentary

This haunted reverie drops us inside an Istanbul retirement home, where the battle-scarred residents revel in the camera’s attention. A creaky-voiced woman shares her personal account of the Armenian genocide, a sweetly deluded pianist performs a composition before confessing his love and a blind photographer fiddles with his flash as he points his own camera back at us. All the while, however, the ominous transformation of the land is taking place at the hands of construction machinery.

The Pillar of Salt

The Pillar of Salt · 2018

The Pillar of Salt

A reclusive woman in her thirties leads a life frozen in time in a cave-like room. In her rare trips to the city, she chats with an oarswoman haunted by the devils. She searches for her twin sister in unfrequented corners of the city. In this journey in which time and space are out of joint, a same dream is recounted time after time.

Forms of Forgetting

Forms of Forgetting · 2023

Forms of Forgetting

MovieDramaDocumentary

Nesrin and Erdem talk about their relationship, which they don’t remember in exactly the same way. Çevik’s visually stunning essay uses their conversations to forge a pensive treatise on what it means to forget, where word and image play an equal role.

Nothing in Its Place

Nothing in Its Place · 2024

Nothing in Its Place

MovieDramaThriller

In 1978, five leftist youths who believed that the leftist revolution could be realized through politics, not violence, gathered in a house and started to talk about the magazine they had published. The unexpected events that take place later that night reveal the political chaos in Turkey before the 1980 coup d'état.

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants · 2026

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants

At midnight, two lab assistants study an unknown substance using machines and procedures that are unclear to us. They pursue knowledge through the strict logic of the laboratory. As exhaustion settles in, one of the assistants brews Turkish coffee for the other, and the night shifts. The process becomes a fortune-telling, and the scientific gaze gives way to intuition. Moving from analysis to foresight, the two women imagine another method of knowing; a space where rational inquiry and intuitive perception coexist.

As the Spring Arrives, Water Recalls the Nomads

As the Spring Arrives, Water Recalls the Nomads · 2026

As the Spring Arrives, Water Recalls the Nomads

MovieDocumentary

A heterogeneous group of shepherds travels through the Çukurova valley in Turkey, following in the footsteps of their nomadic ancestors. Between archives and imaginary correspondence, the film becomes an echo of the memory and disappearance of pastoral ecosystems.

Center

‘‘There will be 3 copies of this video. The first one is here (MacDowell, Putnam Studio), the second one is with Seda M. and the third one is with me. Please don’t copy it and take it with you because nothing is permanent.’’

An Incomplete Calendar

An Incomplete Calendar · 2026

An Incomplete Calendar

MovieDocumentaryMusic

A forgotten musical record connects Caracas to Tehran, revealing untold stories of oil, not as a commodity, but as a political leverage for the liberation struggles in Palestine and building Pan-Arab solidarity between 1960-1970.

A Topography of Memory

A Topography of Memory · 2019

A Topography of Memory

Video: Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, live action footage shot in Istanbul, Turkey, June 8, 2015. Sound: A family on their way to vote in the Turkish general election of June 7, 2015.

We Are a Family

We Are a Family · 2020

We Are a Family

Haluk, an incompetent factory owner, competes with his wife and skillful operations manager Güler. As the power crisis between the husband and wife escalates, someone unexpected will suffer from it in a most tragic way.

More Like This

Couldn't load this row right now.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter