The Market: a Tale of Trade (12A)

SYNOPSIS

The prospect of breaking into the burgeoning mobile phone market in 1990s Turkey prompts small-town chancer Tayanc Ayaydin to embezzle the local doctor in Ben Hopkins's darkly comic morality tale. Determined to remain independent of leering black marketeer Hakan Sahin, Ayaydin embarks on a scrap smuggling mission to Azerbaijan with grouchy uncle Genco Erkal. But his naivete almost proves his undoing. Making evocative use of Konstantin Kroning's imposing images, Hopkins brings an acute outsider's eye to the rugged mountain terrain, decaying industrial architecture and bustling bazaars. But it's his empathy with the roguish Ayaydin, as he seeks to exploit the chaos and corruption caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, that keeps this droll rite of passage compelling to the uplifting ending, which suggests there is more at work in the world than market forces.