Your Company
 

Sibel

✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Turkey, France, Germany · 2019
1h 35m
Director Cagla Zencirci
Starring Damla Sönmez, Erkan Kolçak Köstendil, Emin Gürsoy, Elit İşcan
Genre Drama

25-year-old Sibel lives with her father and sister in a secluded village in the mountains of Turkey’s Black Sea region. Sibel is a mute, but she communicates by using the ancestral whistled language of the area.

Stream Sibel

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

80

Screen Daily by Allan Hunter

A tight, focused piece of storytelling, Sibel is impressive in the way it also embraces the journeys of the other characters. Sibel’s newfound defiance and confidence in herself also changes her sister and allows her father to actively embrace a more modern view of the world.

50

Variety by Jay Weissberg

Weaving together folklore, gender roles and a fitful kind of emancipation in the story of a mute young woman desperate to counter the ostracism of her fellow villagers, the writer-director couple have created an attractive package that doesn’t hold up to close inspection.

83

The Film Stage by Leonardo Goi

If Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s 2015 Mustang – a feature that would make for a terrific double bill – shares with Sibel a perceptive eye for the way a cancerous patriarchy can stifle a girl’s coming of age, Sibel takes the critique a step further, shedding light on its cross-gender repercussions.

Users who liked this film also liked