Set in Turkey and filmed on location in Germany with no attempt to hide the artifice, the trenchantly honest and terrifically acted new film from The Teachers’ Lounge director Ilker Çatak might be the most important film yet made about Donald Trump’s America. Though it obviously has more specific ties to Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Yellow Letters has plenty to share with western audiences about the role of art in political protest and the myriad forms that cancel culture can take.
So many of my fellow Americans think everything is about us — and also, apparently, that anything that’s not about us isn’t worth paying attention to.