A thief in Cannes: Stealing Şerif Gören’s Palme d’Or

Book excerpt: The film Yol (The Road) is a landmark in Türkiye’s cinema history, not only because it shared the Palme d’Or with Missing by Greek-born French director Konstantinos Gavras at the 35th Cannes Film Festival in 1982, but also because it was the first film from Türkiye to receive the highly prestigious Golden Palm. Şerif Gören directed the film, but the award was given to Yılmaz Güney (Pütün), the screenwriter and one of the editors of the film, who was present at the festival. The award was given to Güney, not on behalf of Şerif Gören, but instead of the film’s director, and The Road was publicised both at the festival and in the following period as “a Yılmaz Güney film”. Even today, many popular or academic publications, including the official website of the Cannes Film Festival, credit Güney as the director of the film, despite his imprisonment during the entire preparation and shooting process. Strikingly, in the majority of these sources, the name of the film’s real director, Şerif Gören, is either not mentioned at all or is given after Güney’s in small letters. This study hopes to correct several (film) historical records as well as a historical injustice against Gören. I also hope that this text will inspire Şerif Gören to break his silence, the reason of which I cannot understand, and allow us to learn new things about one of the most important filmmakers in Türkiye’s cinema and his films through a dialogue or discussion environment that can ensue.