Journey into Turkey’s recent history with two soundtracks

Two Turkish movies currently playing in theaters take the audience on a journey into recent history with their soundtracks. Available on iTunes and Spotify, the soundtracks offer a chance to glimpse the last three decades of Turkey’s pop culture The soundtracks to two recent Turkish releases could offer the best opportunity to glimpse Turkey’s last three decades – into what we have listened to in love, loss and in the mood to dance. Both director Çiğdem Vitrinel’s sophomore feature “Fakat Müzeyyen Bu Derin Bir Tutku” (But Müzeyyen, That’s the Deepest Desire) and Tunç Şahin’s “Karışık Kaset” (Mixtape) take their viewers into their stories of love through their music.

Both films are adaptations, and both offer the triple pleasure of the written word, movie going experience and a nostalgic trip through music. “Fakat Müzeyyen” is a loose adaptation of İlhami Algör’s novella of the same name. In fact, the exact phrasing in the film credits is “inspired by.” The film stars two TV favorites, Erdal Beşikçioğlu and Sezin Akbaşoğulları.

'BUT MÜZEYYEN, THAT’S THE DEEPEST DESIRE' Beşikçioğlu plays Arif, a “writer with no published book,” asking the age-old question, what do women want? Overwhelmed with trying to figure out women, Arif meets Müzeyyen, a spirited woman who breaks all the conceptions of the opposite sex in Arif’s head. With the backdrop of an Istanbul filtered magically with the award-winning lens of cinematographer Vedat Özdemir, Arif and Müzeyyen’s story blossoms into something unexpected for both of the leading characters.

The film takes on the relationship dilemma through the eyes of a handful of male and female characters. One of the...