GELECEK UZUN SURER (THE FUTURE LASTS FOREVER) begins with a haunting image of a horse running across a deserted landscape and being shot down with a gun. This direct reference to Sydney Pollack's THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY (1969) sets the tone for a film that focuses on the sheer waste of life during the so-called Kurdish conflict that dominated Turkish history in the Nineties and beyond, and continues to this day. In light of recent events in Syria, the issues raised by this film have become even more significant.Sumru (Gaye Gursel) is a doctoral student from Istanbul traveling to the east of Turkey to do research on elegies. At the film's beginning, she sees her work as divorced from politics; it is simply a means to obtaining an academic end. She gradually becomes involved with local resident Ahmet (Durukan Ordu), and together they visit various places where the conflict - and its consequences - has been most keenly felt. Along the way they interview various family members who have lost loved ones: most of these interviews are shot with a single camera pointing at the interviewee, interspersed with reaction shots of Sumru and her colleagues.Director Ozcan Alper has constructed a leisurely narrative, with long shots of the rolling eastern Turkish landscape interspersed with close-ups of the main protagonists. This is a low-key film in terms of tone - a strategy that only served to underline the horror of the events discussed. Many families in the region have experienced the pain of torture, familial loss, and unwarranted intrusion by troops; but their stories are often excluded from the 'official' narratives of recent history. Alper's film serves to bring them to light once more. The allusion to Pollack's film underlines the cheapness of human life - especially for the generals (and other leaders) involved in the conflict. Someone has to get killed in order to fulfill one's ends. Yet Alper suggests that no one - not least the local residents - has any real clue what the conflict is (or was) about any more.The film's narrative closes with Sumru's mysterious disappearance, and a return of the horse galloping across the screen once more. The image serves to remind us that individuals count for nothing in this conflict - not even the so-called protagonist of Alper's film.

This is definitely a political film and maybe this explains why the fact that the two protagonists never establish a romantic relationship.This would weaken the pro Kurdish's sentiments that the narrative tries to evoke to the viewers.I cannot comment on Turkish history since i don't know much, one thing i know is that the recent generation of Turkish filmmakers tend to show the beauty of their country via cinematography.I like films that are focused on images not on the narrative flow, even though this will make some viewers to discard this because they feel bored.The horse symbolism was too obvious and redundant.Still i think that so many images of the vastness of mother nature render human conflict insignificant...So maybe it would be more effective in an ideological level the background of politics to be the city scape and not remote territories.Sometimes the issue of alienation between characters seems a little contrived especially in pastoral settings.I recommend the film to people who consider cinema as an art and not as entertainment.

Artvin-born Özcan Alper raised the standards of Turkish cinema with his directorial debut "Autumn". He was both acclaimed within his country and abroad. (He was nominated for European Discovery of the Year in the 2009 European Film Awards) Surely, a lot of of people have been expecting his new movie. Sonbahar, which meticulously dishes up a humanitarian mix of politics, romanticism and Anatolian reality has warmed the hearts of anybody from any ethnic and political background. That may be the very reason why so many cineastes have been tingling with eager anticipation for "Future Lasts Forever". , Starring Gaye Gürsel(Sumru) as an Istanbul music student who travels to modern day south-eastern Turkey to record traditional elegies, Future Lasts Forever claims to shed some light on the immediate history of modern Turkey (early 199Os). Does Alper really achieve that? Does he preserve his objectivity or is he just being tendentious? It does actually sound questionable. First of all, the story looks quite like a documentary. Sumru, who is supposed to collect rarely known Anatolian elegies, is actually taking videos of Kurdish families who lost their families in the war against the PKK terror. It's clear that Alper wants to disturb his audience. To a layman who does not know much about the period, this will surely sound like a heart-rending story.Nationalist Kurds have always claimed (do still claim) that their ethnic and cultural rights have been constantly repressed. I am not not going to expatiate whether this could be true or not but let me add that there are countless ethnic varieties in Turkey and Kurds are the only one who committed violence in modern day Turkey. For more than 30 years Turkey has been fighting against PKK, -supposedly-a Marxist-Leninist -actually- a terrorist organization that keenly relishes the slaughter of Turkish public officers like teachers, doctors, technicians, engineers, Kurdish village guards and police.With about 5,000 members under arms, the PKK has been responsible for the killings of tens of thousands, including peaceful Kurds. Özcan Alper is actually from Artvin, a city on the Black Sea Coast where different ethnic minorities live. I wonder whether he has ever asked himself why the Turkish army never had to fight in the Black Sea region? If you look at the statistics, the biggest state-sponsored investment is still in the regions where Kurds predominate, Kurds are now well-represented in the parliament and state TV and radio broadcasts in Kurdish, the biggest number of teachers and doctors are employed in the East,so why do you think PKK still exists and why don't the Black Sea people ever think of being violent? To cut a long story short, Özcan Alper unfortunately takes sides.No matter how lamentable it sounds to a foreigner, you can't tell this story to someone who has lost her son, her husband, her brother in the army and you can't make a story credible by making people listen to one elegy while you have more than three interviews. Cinematographically, the movie looks fine but then again it feels it has been taken for a documentary footage. With a less didactic style, with an ear to those on the other side of this strife this movie could have been something.Unfortunately, it has nothing to say for a Turk who has also lost someone. P.S. I have been to the places where this movie set. A couple of years ago I visited that Armenian church in the movie but I did not really see anyone living there.Only a few kids who brief you on the immediate history of the place. There's still an active Syriac church there, though.