Women in the Cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Abstract

This study in general examines the representation of women in Turkish cinema with a retrospective evaluation and tries to understand the present condition, specifically it examines the ways in which women were treated in the films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, one of the most important directors of Turkish cinema in the recent period. The study focuses on  Climate, Three Monkeys, Once Upon A Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep named movies of Ceylan, and these movies were analysed with the qualitative content analysis method. According to the findings of the study, in his films Ceylan generally picks men as the main characters. In his own words, he finds men's world more complicated and fragmented and women are the secondary characters who are suppressed under patriarchal structure and male domination.