Stretching across an expansive tomato farm under the blazing Turkey sun, Murat Fıratoğlu’s opening shot to his award-winning One of Those Days When Hemme Dies is purposefully striking.
“It’s not a set,” says the writer-director, whose film has been selected as Turkey’s official submission for best international feature film at the 2026 Academy Awards. “It’s a setting that I thought would serve the character’s world.”
The inner turmoil of Fıratoğlu’s protagonist proves a powerful engine for the drama. Eyüp, portrayed by Fıratoğlu, finds work drying tomatoes in southeastern Turkey, but is not paid his daily wages. Pushed to the brink of frustration, he roams the surrounding town intending to punish his employer, Hemme, though Eyüp’s task is continuously diverted by trivial run-ins with local residents. The product is a vibrant, at-times-humorous examination of life’s cyclical nature — and won Fıratoğlu the special jury prize after its world premiere in Venice last year.
“It’s not a personal story,” says Fıratoğlu about his directorial debut during a recent THR Presents panel. “But being a practicing lawyer myself, I’ve had to be in similar situations. This theme had always been in my mind — the human condition.”
“Despite a person’s humiliations,” the filmmaker continues, “things pass, good or bad. This is the human condition that attracted me, not any specific themes of masculinity. I’m really amazed by the passing of life,” he says, paraphrasing an exert from Jon Fosse’s 1995 novel Melancholy: “I don’t understand this [binary idea of] happiness and sadness about life. I just want to celebrate it all.”
Fıratoğlu with Venice’s special jury prize for One of Those Days When Hemme Dies in 2024.
Courtesy of Getty
Fıratoğlu believes this analysis of what it means to be human speaks to a universal audience, but One of Those Days When Hemme Dies is still honoring Turkish culture. “I get to travel the world now, and I realize how culture plays [a role] in real life,” he explains to THR. “Let’s say someone decides to kill someone in L.A. … I don’t think anyone would stop this from happening. But where I’m from, the whole village would stop this from happening. The film isn’t real, but the same thing applies [to another scene] — they would never, ever let that guy leave the table without having a bite [to eat].”
At the same time, he hopes viewers will see Eyüp as not too different from themselves. “With the speed of globalization and the culture industry, I do the same things around the world. I take an Uber and drink Starbucks in Turkey,” says the director. “[The film] is not about me giving a message about Turkey, it’s about giving a message of how people are the same.”
Of course, One of Those Days When Hemme Dies was made by a practicing lawyer, a facet that has made for something of a double life for Fıratoğlu: “Funny things have started happening to me since this transition [into film],” he says. “There was a film screening, and then I went to a court wearing my law gown. [Laughs.] So I do two jobs right now. But […] when you are an independent filmmaker, all you’re concerned about is telling a story and [not expecting anything] in return.”
The director is brimming with more ideas and, thanks to his acting capabilities, has already shot his second movie. “We made that second movie just five [people], otherwise, the budgets are impossible,” he says. “But it’s something that liberates me, acting and directing. We have a saying in Turkish: once you get a taste of the stage, you can’t really go back. It comes easy to me, so I can keep acting. Why not?”
Fıratoğlu is also full of confidence following the movie’s Venice win. “What more can I ask for?” he asks. “I really hope it’s a similar journey for young filmmakers like me. … Because I watched this movie so many times, I grew kind of distant from it. So I never know how people of different cultures are going to respond to it. What makes me the happiest is people watching this from different countries in the world and still being happy with it.”
One of Those Days When Hemme Dies had its world premiere at the Orizzonti section at the 81st Venice Film Festival before it screened at the Marrakech International Film Festival, as well as at the Singapore, Stockholm and Moscow film fests.
This edition of THR Presents is sponsored by Türkiye Film Commission.
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