Director Tayfun Pirselimoglu adapts one of his books for the first time. Based on a 2014 novel of the same name, Kerr follows a middle-aged man named Can.
Can, the main character addressed in the film as the tailor’s son, returns to his hometown and witnesses a murder at the train station. He is the sole witness. The killer shows no interest in Can and calmly leaves the scene of the crime.
The police start the investigation and don’t allow Can to leave town once his testimony is recorded. He meets various strange friends of his father in a place where he feels trapped. Weird things keep happening one after another, and quarantine is declared due to an increased number of rabies cases spread by stray dogs. The whole town turns into purgatory. There is no exit for Can as he approaches the edge of insanity.
Why did Pirselimoglu decide to make this adaptation now? Asked by a reporter at ioncinema.com, he said: “It’s the first time I made a film from one of my books. Another challenge. I thought it is time to do something regarding one of my own novels. While you are writing it somehow you are shooting the film by yourself. I just wanted to show what is in my brain to the audience. It is another experience.”
The director, screenwriter, producer, and painter Tayfun Pirselimoglu graduated from the Middle East Technical University. He went to Vienna and studied painting at Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst -Academy of Applied Arts. He held various exhibitions in Vienna, Istanbul, Ankara, Budapest, and Tallinn. He is one of the founders of the independent art initiative Akademie Genius.
Pirselimoglu wrote ‘Tales from the Desert’, ‘Album of the Missing Persons’, ‘Melancholia’, ‘Towers of the City’, ‘Kerr’, ‘The Barber’, ‘Rooms of the Hotels’, ‘The Newest Lives of Harry Lime’, and ‘Other Side of the Desert’. He started his film career as a scriptwriter and wrote various scripts for shorts and features.
He directed his first short film, Dayim (My Uncle), in 1999.  His Il Silenzio e d’Oro (Silence is Golden), was presented in 2002. He brought us Hiçbiryerde (In Nowhereland) that same year. He then turned his attention to what would become a trilogy of ‘conscience and death’: Riza, from 2007; Pus (Haze) released in 2009; and Saç (Hair), in 2010. His film Sideway arrived in 2017.
Kerr is a Turkey-Greece-France co-production. The cast includes Erdem Şenocak, Jale Arıkan, Rıza Akın, Gafur Uzuner, Ali Seçkiner Alici, Melih Düzenli, Sinan Bengier, Muttalip Müjdeci, Hakkı Kurtuluş. The film won the Best Cinematography award at the Asian World Film Festival.