Critics reviews

Clearly made with ambitions of saying many politically pointed things in a country run by a ruthlessly retrograde and patriarchal regime, Sibel deflates before it’s over, in one of the year’s weakest and least consequential denouements.

Like much in the film, the character feels forced, a mere plot device taken from fairy tales divorced from a sense of reality. Yet it might have worked had the film aimed at playing on that liminal Guillermo del Toro-like border between the real and the folk story. Instead, the film sits in an uneasy area, wanting to reproduce real life in this “exotic” village yet forcing it into a straightjacket of primal legends and inorganic notions.

…A powerful film drenched in a mysterious – and to some extent even mystical – atmosphere. As the directors themselves have said, this is the first time that they have approached a narrative using a professional actress (Damla Sönmez, who gives a heart-rending performance). The result is touching and resplendent, just like Sibel herself.

Hunting for a wolf with a rifle, red boots, and a red bandana, Sibel’s character harkens back to a centuries-old Little Red Riding Hood-esque mythology, but in the context of today’s discourse, it feels ineffably timely.