Yellow letters: what is the 2026 Golden Bear worth? (critical)

The director of The Teachers’ Room depicts the daily life of a Turkish couple in turmoil for daring to oppose Erdogan’s regime. Although a little long, a film that hits hard and right

We discovered Ilker Çatak in 2023 with The Teachers’ Roomthe first of his feature films to be distributed in France. A gripping thriller which described with great relevance the complex daily life of teachers today and ended up being nominated for an Oscar for foreign language film. With Yellow lettersÇatak continues to tell the story of our times and its torments. Here he examines the country where his family comes from and where he himself spent part of his youth: Turkey. A pamphlet film that he was unable to shoot on location, as he mischievously points out in the credits, indicating that Berlin and Hamburg will play the respective roles of Ankara and Istanbul.

Her Yellow letters features a couple in turmoil for daring not to give in to the injunctions of the Erdogan regime. She as an actress on the stage of the National Theater, he as a teacher at the university. Both banned from practicing their profession. How can you stay faithful to your ideals when economic reality is slowly strangling you? This is the question that underlies this story which would have deserved to shed a few superfluous subplots. But when it focuses on this couple, their descent into the most unbreathable hell and the way in which the political impacts the intimate, the film hits hard and true. He didn’t steal his Golden Bear!

By Ilker Çatak. With Özgü Namal, Tansu Biçer, Leyla Smyrna Cabas… Duration: 2h08. Released April 1, 2026