Review: Neandria (2023) dir. Reha Erdem

Turkish writer-director Reha Erdem isn’t a name many North American cineastes will recognize. Even those familiar with Turkish cinema would be forgiven for not having Erdem on their new release radar. That doesn’t stop Erdem with each new film from declaring his own relevance to the larger project of prickly modern political art. Poet and academic Hakan Arslanbenzer, who knows much more about these things than I do, calls Erdem a “clever minimalist.” Between his newest film, Neandria, which is having its North American premiere at the Boston Turkish Film Festival, and his Covid-19 screenlife adjacent and digital minimalist Hey There! (2021), Erdem has made his career-length exercise of chronicling the modern and the political abundantly transparent.

Modern life doesn’t share a look with Erdem’s films, which are ironically both too digital and too de-consumerized to reflect actual digital life. Contemporary political engagement, career building, and the search for individual fulfillment in a detached world do, however, feel like Erdem’s movies. Even the production of his films have something faultlessly modern about them. Hey There! uses entirely in-world digital screens and the innovative ecological production of Neandria — intentionally minimizing the carbon footprint — does not reflect old, broken ideas about the production of art.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.