Shortly before the 2025 edition of the Berlinale, incoming festival head Tricia Tuttle was outspoken about filmmakers shunning the event over fears they would be censored out of political pressures. The 2024 edition ended with German politicians outright condemning the team behind the prize-winning No Other Land for “antisemitism”––culminating in a scene straight out of an Armando Iannucci script, where one Green politician at the closing ceremony claimed she was only applauding the Israeli co-directors, not the Palestinian ones––and fears the new head would do everything she could to limit controversy. During her second round of the job, Tuttle’s remarks supporting freedom of speech were replaced with hand-wringing statements decrying how politics overshadowed the films, as well as a Jury President and several A-list guests championing “apolitical” work. It is, without a doubt, the funniest possible context in which to award the Golden Bear to a drama about the need to speak out against authoritarianism and the personal cost for any artist who uses their platform to do so.
Director and co-writer İlker Çatak’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated The Teachers’ Lounge drops the satirical social allegory in favor of earnest family drama, though his approach remains just as blunt in its cultural commentary. It happens all of a sudden: following the premiere of their latest play in Ankara, star Derya (Özgü Namal) and her playwright husband Aziz (Tansu Biçer) have little time to celebrate the glowing reviews and buzzy reception as opening night winds down. Both are outspoken critics of the Turkish government, and Derya’s bold decision to not be photographed with a senior politician in attendance starts a ripple effect for the couple, with Aziz––who is a university lecturer by day––ruffling more feathers by sending his students away from his class to attend the anti-government demonstrations erupting directly outside. Aziz is almost immediately fired, alongside several colleagues also accused of left-wing views, and his plays are removed from circulation in the repertoire of Derya’s theatre troupe. Shortly afterwards, she turns up to rehearse a different play and is halted from going beyond the box office area; she has also been quietly removed from her position and recast for offering the mildest rebuke to those in power. Alongside their teenage daughter, the couple have no choice but to cut costs and move in with Aziz’s mother in Istanbul.
The further removed I’ve become from Yellow Letters––titled after the ominous government correspondence both reveal––the more convinced I’ve become that its boldest formal gambit undermines the impact of its anti-authoritarian credentials. Due to difficulties securing funding for such a critical film within Turkey, Çatak shot the movie in Germany and had no intention of hiding it, with title cards acknowledging that Berlin and Hamburg are stand-ins for Ankara and Istanbul, respectively. Protests that the characters attend are real pro-Palestine demonstrations that took place around both cities during shooting, but the director includes a plethora of flags and placards––multiple Ukraine and Pride flags can be seen waved from the crowd––to give the impression of a more all-encompassing protest against a government’s failures both domestically and internationally. But this quasi-guerilla method of shooting is ill-fitting with a coherent criticism of the country’s slide to authoritarianism when—at least on a world stage—they’ve severed all diplomatic ties with Israel and have tried to position themselves on the Ukrainian side of peace talks, with only the Pride flags acting as a reminder of that government’s harmful domestic policy.
It becomes clear through these moments that the filmmaker isn’t interested in depicting a single country’s descent into strongman rule, but utilizing his deliberately non-specific backdrop––two European cities standing in for two others––to document how close most nations are from having this on their doorstep. And upon realizing that the specifics of this fascist state have been written with enough blanks for the audience to impart the national political crises of their own countries onto the drama, the project feels a lot more timid, as inauthentic as its deliberately uncanny setting. In that sense, maybe it was the perfect Golden Bear winner for this “apolitical” Berlinale: it offers the illusion of an artist speaking out and making a change, but keeps everything distanced enough from reality so nobody is ever threatened with hearing uncomfortable truths.
However, when the world stage is in the rearview and the drama relegated to the intimacy of the family home, it becomes far more affecting. As these aspects of the narrative revolve around careers and personal finances, Yellow Letters does a more insightful job of examining the necessity of speaking out, even if it will continue to cost you the chance to earn a basic livelihood. Cramped into one apartment, with Aziz forced into taking a taxi-driver role to try and make ends meet, the domestic scenes increasingly suggest a pressure cooker. It also twists the knife ever so slightly, addressing some of the ways these formerly upper-class intellectuals were shielded from the state’s bigger crimes by their privilege, although it never becomes quite so excoriating as it should. Similarly, Derya’s third-act quandary—whether or not to disavow her previous comments to accept a soap opera gig—feels dramatically streamlined from something thornier. As winning as the family drama so often is, it’s frequently as unsatisfyingly broad as the political critique; this is through no fault of the performances of Biçer and Namal, the latter particularly excelling in moments where she has to navigate between vocal dissent and avoiding burning more professional bridges.
Yellow Letters‘ heart is ultimately in the right place, but good intentions alone can’t make for the rousing call-to-arms against creeping authoritarianism that Çatak and his co-writers hope. It feels effective in the moment, but becomes more hollow in retrospect for the lack of specificity in what it’s standing firmly against. If this was the most political film in the Berlinale competition, maybe it could be named an apolitical festival with a straight face after all.
Yellow Letters premiered at the 2026 Berlinale.