Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes

Distant

Play trailer Poster for Distant PG-13 2004 1h 49m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
87% Tomatometer 46 Reviews 82% Popcornmeter 5,000+ Ratings
After losing his factory job, Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) leaves his Turkish village and travels to Istanbul in search of work. There, he lives with his cousin Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir), a well-to-do photographer. Yusuf, who assumed it would be easy to secure a position aboard a ship, has little luck in his job search. As the days go by, Mahmut clashes with his countrified cousin over their vast differences in personality -- and, perhaps more so, their uncomfortable similarities.
Distant

What to Know

Critics Consensus

Hauntingly beautiful, Distant communicates volumes with its almost pervasive silence.

Read Critics Reviews

Critics Reviews

View More
Brandon Judell IndieWire 06/05/2021
"Distant," that's more like a warning than a title . . . . The two leads will eventually clash, but not enough to make this offering worthy of sitting through. Go to Full Review
Antonia Quirke London Evening Standard 12/14/2017
There is plenty to admire here, but the movie is a gaunt affair, with something ruinously washed-out about it. Go to Full Review
Jeff Shannon Seattle Times 01/28/2005
3/4
Deeply compassionate and frequently amusing, qualifying as a minor miracle of humanely observant filmmaking. Go to Full Review
Ray Pride Newcity 06/23/2022
10/10
It is very sad but also very beautiful. (Particularly after snow flocks the gray-on-gray city.) There is one breathtaking moment, a scene involving a beached tanker in snow, that is merely the best of dozens of indelible fragments. Go to Full Review
PJ Nabarro One Room With A View 12/02/2018
4/5
Ceylan's cinema affects a solipsism that leads to a heightened sense of one's own surroundings - thus creating not a slow cinema but an extremely attentive cinema. Go to Full Review
Josh Ralske All Movie Guide 09/08/2005
8/10
The tale has a deceptive, emotional complexity that builds to a surprisingly heartrending impact. Go to Full Review
Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View More
Sam N Mar 28 Uzak (Distant) struck me as a quiet, contemplative look at loneliness—not just being alone, but that more profound kind of isolation you can feel even when someone’s right there. I admired Ceylan’s direction: those long, still shots, the wintry mood, the way silence does most of the talking. Muzaffer Özdemir felt totally believable as Mahmut—stuck in his routines, emotionally bottled up—while Mehmet Emin Toprak brought this quiet sadness to his role that stayed with me. I appreciated the craft and atmosphere but never entirely connected with it emotionally. Beautifully made, just a little too distant for me. See more hamid reza g 02/28/2023 A good movie is both enjoyable to watch and a movie that is noticed and stays in the mind. An unpretentious but powerful drama with a unique performance by both main actors, which shows a tactful direction. One of the attractive points of the film is the direction and cinematography. Another good point of the movie is the few dialogues, but appropriate. The film is a story of loneliness and alienation of people in today's life. See more 07/03/2022 one of the best Turkish movie classics. See more 06/03/2022 That scene with Stalker on the tv screen really did this for me. See more Tim G 05/26/2022 I don't mind slow and atmospheric and all that but jeez, this was snail-like. See more William L 02/19/2022 It feels as if films about isolation in a world of billions inevitably skew towards technology as the culprit, implying that there was some sort of idyllic balance before television and social media came along to chain everyone to some form of addictive content. Uzak takes a different, more universal stance on loneliness, largely independent of technology and more focused on clashes in personality, disillusionment, and emotional self-isolation. In their attempts to reach out and firmly graps some direct connection, Özdemir's Mahmut and Toprak's Yusuf only seem able to flail against the current, every day bleeding into the next as they observe others at a distance without the courage to take a decisive step. Bleak but riddled with cynical bits of humor, this is one of those films that may draw critics due to its slow pacing alone, but that tedium matches the thematic goals of the film and ends up reinforcing the development of the characters (or notable lack thereof). (3.5/5) See more Read all reviews
Distant

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW
Reconstruction 72% 87% Reconstruction Watchlist King of the Hill 91% 84% King of the Hill Watchlist Noi the Albino 88% 85% Noi the Albino Watchlist Million Dollar Baby 90% 90% Million Dollar Baby Watchlist Discover more movies and TV shows. View More

Movie Info

Synopsis After losing his factory job, Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) leaves his Turkish village and travels to Istanbul in search of work. There, he lives with his cousin Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir), a well-to-do photographer. Yusuf, who assumed it would be easy to secure a position aboard a ship, has little luck in his job search. As the days go by, Mahmut clashes with his countrified cousin over their vast differences in personality -- and, perhaps more so, their uncomfortable similarities.
Director
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Producer
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Screenwriter
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Distributor
New Yorker Films
Production Co
NBC Film
Rating
PG-13 (Creature Violence|Some Strong Language)
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Turkish
Release Date (Theaters)
Mar 12, 2004, Limited
Rerelease Date (Theaters)
May 20, 2022
Release Date (DVD)
Mar 1, 2007
Box Office (Gross USA)
$10.2K
Runtime
1h 49m
Sound Mix
Surround, Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio
Flat (1.85:1)