Ece Yüksel: “Where we filmed, the mountains are like walls and we really had the feeling of being trapped”

21/10/2019.- The International Film Week in Valladolid presented this Tuesday 22 October the film Kız Kardeşler (A Tale of Three Sisters), by Turkish filmmaker Emin Alper, which is competing in the Official Section. The film is inspired by the filmmaker’s own vital experience, as actress Ece Yüksel, one of the main actresses, explained a the press conference after the projection.

The actress has indicated that traditionally, in Turkey, well-off families would take in as step daughters rural girls, convinced that they were giving them the opportunity to have a better life. However, the status of these girls was that of servants, even if they called their new parents mom and dad and sat with them at the table. One of these fostered girls raised the director of A tale of three sisters, Emin Alper, who decided to create a film to explore this contradictory situation.

Ece Yüksel, plays the role of Nurhan, the middle sister of the three sisters in the story. As she has stated, it is her first leading role.In order to prepare for her character, the actress, apart from studying for hours the videos of locals to learn their accident and gestures, faced two big challenges: “She prepared a lot, but specially for the relationship between the three sisters. For me, another big challenge was the location, between mountains, since I am from Istanbul and I really felt trapped.”

This claustrophobic feeling was somethings the whole team had in common; they were all staying an hour and a half away from the town where they were filming. “When we arrived, the landscape was beautiful, but the mountains there are like walls and we really had the feeling of being trapped.” Throughout the story, the girls do as much as they can to try to go back to the city. As Ece Yüksel has affirmed, “Emin Alper wasn’t only raised by a foster girl, but he also got to know the mountains closely himself during his childhood, so he has really good observations about the girls’ obsession with running way from there, even in the difficult conditions of going to a house”.

Currently, Turkey is changing in this sense. The number of girls being taken in at rich house is decreasing, according to the actress: “It hasn’t disappeared, but it’s not comparable to what happened in the 60s or 70s in the past century or even the 90s.”

Regarding Turkish cinema in general and her cinematographic future in particular, the actress was optimistic in terms of the first and enthusiastic regarding her plan: “Regarding appearing on TV, it depends on the script, the role and the circumstances, but I’m not ruling it out since I like what happens before and during shootings.”