“Salvation”, interview with director Emin Alper

Presented in Competition at the 76th Berlinale

Presented in Competition at the 76th Berlinale, “Salvation” is the new film by Turkish director Emin Alper, winner of the Grand Jury Prize.

The filmmaker whose work consistently explores how communities create enemies, how fear spreads, and how ordinary people legitimize extraordinary violence, sets his story in a remote village high in the Turkish mountains, where the return of an exiled clan reignites a decades-old land feud. At the centre of the story is Mesut, the local leader’s brother, a haunted man seized by unsettling visions he believes to be divine warnings — visions that push him to challenge his brother’s authority and unleash a spiral of religious conviction, power struggle and collective paranoia.

A microcosm that reflects the world

Emin Alper‘s films have always found in small, enclosed communities a mirror for larger dynamics. Salvation is no exception. The remote Turkish village at its centre is, in the director’s own words, “a kind of microcosmos”, a place where all the tensions, fears and power games that define much broader social and political realities play out in concentrated form. The film draws on a real event, and Emin Alper approaches it as an investigation: how do these conditions come together? How do people convince themselves that horrifying actions are justified? “I’m looking for answers throughout the film” he says, “to the question of how people got so crazy and how they legitimize their actions.”

The irony of salvation

The title itself carries a bitter irony. The men at the centre of the story believe they are saving their community, rescuing their nation, acting in the name of God or of a higher cause. It is precisely this conviction, Emin Alper argues, that makes them so dangerous. “The most horrible crimes are committed by people who believe they have a mission, a religious mission, a national mission but always a noble or sacred one.” The film becomes, in this sense, a study not just of individual fanaticism but of the mechanisms through which entire communities are drawn into collective delusion.

From individual to collective paranoia

Central to the film is Mesut’s psychology, a man living a kind of neurosis, chosen by the people as an alternative to existing leadership precisely because of his visions and his apparent connection to something beyond the rational. What begins as individual delirium slowly becomes collective, and Emin Alper traces this transformation with precision. Dreams play a crucial role: in mystical Islamic tradition, divine messages arrive through dreams, and it is through dreams that the community convinces itself of its mission. “The dreams become almost collective at the end” says the director, “reflecting the collective paranoia.”

Women in a masculine story

“Salvation” is, on the surface, a masculine story about fighters, feuds and power. But Emin Alper pays close attention to the women at its edges, and what he finds complicates easy distinctions. One female character reproduces militaristic and patriarchal values as fiercely as any man; another is more clearly a victim. “Sexual differences do not always mean what we think they mean” Emin Alper reflects. “Sometimes women can be more masculine than men, and they can reproduce these values more than men.” It is an uncomfortable observation, but an honest one.

Cinema as a question, not an answer

Asked about the power of cinema today, Emin Alper offers a characteristically measured response. On one hand, the inflation of streaming content has diluted cinema’s impact, audiences zap from one show to the next without pause. On the other, moving images occupy our lives more than ever. “It is a paradoxical situation” he admits, while making clear that for him, as a filmmaker, the movie theatre remains irreplaceable as a space for cinematic experience.

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