Mus­tang is car­ry­ing the torch for female empowerment

It’s no sur­prise to learn of Mustang’s con­cep­tion as the brain­child of the only female direc­tors at Cannes Film Fes­ti­vals Ate­lier in 2011. What French writer/​director Alice Win­tour and Turk­ish direc­tor Deniz Gamze Ergu­ven offer is not only a stark and refresh­ing por­trait of the lives of five Black Sea sis­ters but also an impor­tant com­men­tary on sis­ter­hood and female sol­i­dar­i­ty in Turk­ish society.

So the sto­ry goes: fives orphaned sis­ters in a small Turk­ish vil­lage start goof­ing around with some male class­mates on the last day of school and get caught. In fear of the girls’ rep­u­ta­tions being ruined their guardians put the house on lock­down, remove all objects of cor­rup­tion and quick­ly attempt to mar­ry each of the girls to a local boy before the sum­mer is over.

The ini­tial premise and dreamy sum­mer shots of ado­les­cent bod­ies posi­tions Mus­tang as a Turk­ish remake of Sofia Coppola’s The Vir­gin Sui­cides – there are even shots of the girls being parad­ed in home­made gowns in which they could be mis­tak­en for the Lis­bon sis­ters. But what is strik­ing here in con­trast to the Lis­bons (and indeed oth­er west­ern tales of sis­ters in times of hard­ship) is the way in which this female bond runs through the film in resis­tance to the girls’ fates. What we are left with is a haunt­ing sto­ry of kin­ship that rep­re­sents the chang­ing face of mod­ern Turkey and female empowerment.

The film unfolds as an inti­mate look at the each sister’s own path to wom­an­hood, their fierce bond with one anoth­er and their agency (or lack there­of) in a soci­ety as it turns away from sec­u­lar­ism and moves toward the tra­di­tion­al. A deep cur­rent of polit­i­cal ten­sion runs through the film. It is no coin­ci­dence that when remov­ing the ​‘instru­ments of cor­rup­tion’ from the girls’ rooms the grand­moth­er finds and quick­ly dis­pos­es of a t‑shirt bear­ing the slo­gan #direngezi – a pop­u­lar tag from the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Istanbul.

Through each sis­ter (and to some extent their grand­moth­er) we see some of the larg­er issues arise and the back­stage areas of women’s lives in Turkey. With the house on lock­down and resem­bling more a ​‘wife fac­to­ry’ than a fam­i­ly home, we are encour­aged to explore the pri­vate sphere which the girls inhab­it while con­sid­er­ing how these gen­dered spaces are nav­i­gat­ed and some­times manip­u­lat­ed. There is a beau­ti­ful scene in which an old­er vil­lage mem­ber teach­es one of the girls to make chew­ing gum dur­ing a cook­ing les­son. Much of the film fol­lows its nar­ra­tor and youngest sis­ter Lale, look­ing for these moments of free­dom. Scenes are laced with this bat­tle for lib­er­a­tion, from scop­ing out the house for escape routes to the girls using their mat­tress as an imag­i­nary swim­ming pool or sun­bathing behind iron bars.

These rare scenes where the sis­ters are left to be free in the absence of a male fig­ure, and the impo­si­tion of such patri­archy with­in this space, pose curi­ous ques­tions relat­ing to how the women of Turkey form the work­ing back­bone of the country’s soci­ety. This is bril­liant­ly and heart­break­ing­ly por­trayed in a scene in which the girls are able to sneak into a foot­ball match while their aunts cov­er up their dis­ap­pear­ance. It’s a moment as hilar­i­ous as it is ter­ri­fy­ing in its desperation.

Art has always reflect­ed real­i­ty in Turk­ish cin­e­ma and its film indus­try is no stranger to com­ment­ing on social or polit­i­cal issues affect­ing the coun­try and its peo­ple. Ever since the dark days of cen­sor­ship in the ​’80s, direc­tors such as Nuri Bilge Cey­lan have endeav­oured to explore these changes in rela­tion to both indi­vid­ual and nation­al iden­ti­ty. In Mus­tang, the girls col­lec­tive­ly rep­re­sent Turk­ish wom­an­hood. Erguven’s frank look at issues such as child mar­riage and vir­gin­i­ty test­ing through the wider lens of female sex­u­al­i­ty marks an impor­tant step for­ward in Turk­ish cinema.

Mus­tang is in cin­e­mas and on demand from 13 May.