I’m not sure how I feel about this Turkish film by Selman Nacar. It ended with me feeling that I had missed some political or cultural context, seeing repeated motifs that perhaps had meaning but went over my head.

We spend a day or two in the life of Canan (Tülin Özen), a defense lawyer during a first degree murder trial of factory worker Musa (Ogulcan Arman Uslu). It is the closing day and Canan is pushed from pillar to post, having to deal with a decision to take her mother off life support and trying to organise a last minute witness for the trial. 

Although her life is a rush, Nacar lets us feel the patience-testing delays of the justice system. We hear the prosecutor’s argument that Musa killed his much reviled former boss out of spite. Canan identifies another suspect but this isn’t popular with the victim’s family or, it seems, the judicial court. 

There’s a revelation eventually but I found myself struggling to understand whether it indicated Musa’s guilt or innocence. It’s clear that whoever holds power is ineffective in providing an equitable quality of life – we see it in the constant leaks, the prioritising of religion over law – but I couldn’t quite get a handle on how Canan’s story intersected. This is definitely a story about her and her struggle to reconcile moral rigidity with the messy reality.

It’s an ambiguous ending, which I usually love, but this one didn’t leave me with any insight, other than the beauty of a storm over a city.