Hüseyin Aydin Gürsoy's first feature film, A Turkish Affair, opens in theaters this Wednesday, a political thriller starring Lionel Erdogan as a lawyer who has denied his origins to climb the ranks of a Parisian business firm.
From Mustafa to Mathieu, an erased identity
Mathieu Duman, a promising young lawyer at a Parisian firm run by Claude Delval, played by Charles Berling, has distanced himself from his Turkish community in Villiers-le-Bel to build his career. Born Mustafa, he changed his first name to facilitate his professional integration, until the arrival of a young Turk in distress, Abdallah, a victim of an assault, abruptly pulls him back into a world he thought he had left behind.
By settling Abdallah's case without consulting him, Mathieu makes a mistake that plunges him into a spiral of corruption threatening to bring down everything he has patiently built.
A story informed by the director's own journey
Born in Turkey and arriving in France at the age of three, Hüseyin Aydin Gürsoy himself Gallicized his first name at 21 to facilitate his professional integration, an experience that directly informs the screenplay he co-wrote with Ludovic du Clary. Emrah Kaptan's original score deliberately combines the guitar with the saz, a traditional Turkish instrument, to musically embody the dual heritage of the main character.
The cast also includes Lubna Azabal, Maud Wyler and Metehan Aygün, for a co-production distributed in France by Paname Distribution.
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