Two Lines

Istanbul: Merts and Selin live two lives, one at daytime and one at night, imprisoned in a monotonous everyday life, where they each in their own way are observers of the world around them. Melts uses his days to photograph incidental passers-by, while Selin is a withdrawn businesswoman. But slowly the outside world crowds in on them, first when someone breaks into their apartment while they sleep and later when they decide to take the important step of entering the world, daring to go on a car trip to the south. In a Milan Kundera-like world, relational powers, love and sex are at stake, where two different identities end up in a deadlocked position. Two Lines explores this collision between Turkish traditions and Western values and how this becomes an increasing problem in matters of sex, identity and freedom. The “bildungsroman” structure of the travelogue as we know it is exchanged with a voyage into the great unknown, where the protagonists are two people who ought to be close but rather appear as strangers. Towards the end of the film, one question especially is left hanging: will this trip bring the two closer or pull them more apart than ever? ee