Ali was recently released from an orphanage and is now looking for the girl whom he believes to be his sister: Zuhal. She, on the other hand, is held prisoner by her foster father, who soon wants to make her his second wife... Big Big World sounds like a noir thriller, and looks and feels like one, until it lands a punch that one didn't see coming: he finds her, blood flows, and suddenly they are both on the run... And the film turns into a sort of delicately dark fairy tale about two children, who set out to learn how to live life in a magical world...
Reha Erdem is the most headstrong contemporary Turkish filmmaker, as well as the country's only internationally known director whose aesthetics are rooted in a local, slightly surreal modernity. As in Times and Winds (2006), Cosmos (2010) or Jîn (2013), Big Big World has a levitating quality, an almost ethereal mise-en-scène, which balances the seriousness of the fable with the force of its symbols in an astonishing way. This description already sounds too cerebral when compared to the film's sheer sensual force, which pulls you into solitary chasms and lifts you over glorious heights.
