Kedi

Istan­bul is a gor­geous place. Its colour­ful archi­tec­ture makes for stun­ning views, espe­cial­ly when the sun sets. Look close­ly and you will even find beau­ty on the rooftops and the side­walks. Sil­hou­et­ted like stat­ues over­look­ing the city, count­less stray cats roam the city’s streets at night, undis­turbed by caress­es from passers-by.

Indeed, Kedi (‘cat’ in Turk­ish) is much more than a cute film show­ing these felines’ day-to-day lives. Through inter­views with inhab­i­tants of Istan­bul, the fun­ny habits of cer­tain cats are revealed, and with them, the deep affec­tion that the local peo­ple have for them. They talk about their fur­ry friends as recep­ta­cles for their excess­es of ener­gy, mak­ing them more serene and able to see and enjoy the lit­tle things in life. As the cats go from house to house, nev­er remain­ing entire­ly faith­ful to their hosts but always return­ing, they dis­play a very spe­cial type of love, one that is not blind but not self­ish either – almost human, but sim­pler and per­haps some­how truer.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Char­lie Wupperman’s cam­era is always on the move, fol­low­ing the cats’ fre­net­ic jour­neys in search of food and atten­tion. Close to the ground and often in close-up, it par­tic­i­pates in the anthro­po­mor­phism of cats, which is ful­ly owned by direc­tor Cey­da Torun and the peo­ple she inter­views: these ani­mals tru­ly have dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties. Wup­per­man isn’t afraid of being car­toon­ish and occa­sion­al­ly adopts the cats’ point of view for excit­ing chase and fight sequences.

Each new sto­ry of cat res­cue or dis­cov­ery makes it clear­er that these human-feline rela­tion­ships are mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial. The port of Istan­bul has seen cats arriv­ing from var­i­ous coun­tries for years and the city’s intense street life will keep breed­ing kit­tens as long as it exists. The ani­mals there­fore need the assis­tance of kind peo­ple, who some­times devote large por­tions of their day to feed­ing and heal­ing them, and find them­selves to be grate­ful for it.

A man explains that tak­ing care of aban­doned cats has helped him recov­er from a ner­vous break­down, and many oth­ers speak of a spe­cial con­nec­tion to God through their com­pan­ions. At once down to earth and spir­i­tu­al, Kedi both pays trib­ute to and goes beyond the cul­tur­al speci­fici­ty of its set­ting, reach­ing a more uni­ver­sal con­clu­sion about how pow­er­ful­ly salu­tary the coex­is­tence of man and nature can be.