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Identity

In 'Mustang,' Turkish Teens' Sexuality Can't Be Tamed

We talked to Deniz Gamze Ergüven, the director of a celebrated new film about five sisters coming of age in a conservative Turkish village.
Photos courtesy of Cohen Media Group

If you tell director Deniz Gamze Ergüven that her debut film, Mustang, reminds you a little bit of The Virgin Suicides—both stories are about sisters, in which the older girls have their sexual awakenings and the families are repressive—she'll tell you that she's been told that a million times. And yes, she can see it, but that the stories aren't synonymous. Because more than sisterhood or coming of age or the suffocating patriarchy, Mustang centers on one resonant theme: that while women may be oppressed, they can never be tamed.

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Set in a quiet town in modern-day Turkey, the arthouse film premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and opens with five orphaned sisters celebrating the end of the school year with a trip to the beach, during which an innocent incident abruptly ends their adolescence when a presumptuous neighbor spies them in an apparently inappropriate act. Their conservative uncle then interferes with their life at their grandmother's, where they live; he attempts to shape the sisters in submissive wife material, forcing them not to leave the house without permission (they sneak out), to wear modest "shit-colored dresses" (they rip slits in them), and to stay abstinent (the oldest sister, Sonay, is down with anal). "[Mustang] is about young figures aspiring to freedom in the most glorious way possible," Ergüven says. And with help from another acclaimed screenwriter, Alice Winocour, she proves that there's nothing more glorious than an untamed woman.

Read more: Phoebe Gloeckner's 'Diary of a Teenage Girl' Is a Frank Look at Teen Sexuality

The film is France's official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Academy Awards (though born in Turkey, Ergüven lives in France), and today, it's officially showing in theaters. We talked to Ergüven about the role of women in modern-day Turkey, how to make an audience feel empathy, and long hair.

BROADLY: Tell me more about Mustang—the title, not the entire film.
Deniz Gamze Ergüven: I wanted something that would reference the temper of these girls in one single word. There was something untamable and strong about them, and in the first line of the script, Lale (the youngest sister and the narrator) says something about wild animals. I thought of the girls running in a pack with their long hair behind them, and then I thought of a pack of horses. I also have a cousin whose name translates to "wild little horse." So it was perfect.

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What did you draw on for inspiration for the girls' stories?
I wanted a film with characters who had very true situations. The scene where Selma is taken to the hospital because she hadn't bleed after the first time [she had sex on her wedding night] was something I felt the need to describe. I went to a doctor who works at a public hospital in Turkey who said that occurrence is a common one that happens every year during the spring and the summer, which is wedding season. He said he sees this sort of thing 40 to 50 times a year. It's exactly like when cops think, It's New Year's Eve so there are going to be more drunks out tonight.

Read more: Women Seeking Divorce in Turkey Are Being Murdered by Their Husbands

Did you use your experience growing up at all?
The first scandal the girls trigger (a scene during which the girls are playing in the water with the boys, and when the girls get on the boys' shoulders, they're accused of "rubbing their privates" against the boys) is almost exactly something that happened to me growing up. I remember having a huge sense of guilt afterwards. But then after that scene, I started pulling the strings of fiction.

Why did you choose to set the film in a village instead of in a major city like Istanbul?
It was a choice of cinema. You know, you have these villages in Turkey that are quite empty, and then the big cities are completely modern. The city is not a safe-haven for you once you get there, though—Turkey is complex.

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What do you mean?
Turkey is a conservative society that's only becoming more and more conservative. In 2002, [the Justice and Development Party (AKP)] won a majority, and they have very conservative values. They're extremely vocal about how there's a specific place for women. And anywhere you go, you always hear the voices of these people—on the radio, on the TV, everywhere. They think that women need to have three to four children, that they can't laugh in public, that can't can't look men in the eye. Their voices are a little whisper in people's ears, and it's poison.

What was it like working with young girls who had never acted before?
Elit İşcan [Eci in the film) was the only one who had acted before. She had this great part in another Turkish film, Hayat Var (My Only Sunshine), in which her beauty was an obstacle for her. I thought of her while writing this film. The moment we were all together for the first time, we clicked. They were attacking each other, and then they were defending each other. They became just like sisters, and today they're still that way.

When directing, did you think about how you could make the film resonate with both American and Turkish audiences?
I really thought we needed Turkish female characters who looked like us. I want these characters to generate empathy. What's great with cinema is that with it, we can share points of views. Women are always objects in cinema, so seeing this is a new perspective. I think the film helps you understand their role [in Turkey]. It's important because now these girls are objects of discussion. You can see their aspirations and see who they are.

Did you have any worries about its reception?
Eh. I was going into unknown territory—I didn't know. I hoped that the film and the girls would get empathy. The positive reaction was extremely positive, and the negative was very negative. No one was really in the middle.

What do you want people to think about walking away from your film?
I want to show what it is to be a girl or a woman in Turkey today. In the film, the sisters are at that age where everything you do is considered sexual. But every aspect of a woman's life is [considered] sexual. For me, that's what the film asks: What is at the heart of this [objectification]? What does this serve?