Defne travels to the ancient Mediterranean city of Side and encounters a revolutionary, a sex worker, a priestess, and other mysterious people. Guided by them, she searches for the mother who has abandoned her.

Apollo’s reason and Athena’s cunning hold sway in Emine Yıldırım’s wryly humorous debut feature, which brings history strangely alive. Yearning ghosts more closely resemble the living than the dead in this flickering halfway world—where deities brush with the departed and those they leave behind.