10 Perfect Movies That You've Never Heard Of
3. Mustang - 2015
This Turkish coming of age story is poetic and almost overbearing in its message, yet it hits so close for so many women that it manages the landing almost perfectly.
The movie follows Lale and her four sisters as they experience the repression that surrounds them as young women in a rural Turkish village. The five sisters, having been orphaned for a while, live with their grandmother and uncle, a situation that at the start of the movie seems quite good all things considered..
But on the day the movie begins, the girls decide to go play at the beach with some friends from school - including some boys. It's all innocent fun - they're children after all, and mean no harm - but when neighbours see the spectacle it gets back to the grandmother and uncle, and the girls are punished to an extreme extent.
The girls are repressed and locked away at home with no friends, no school and no technology. They are then matched up and sent off to be married.
But through all this stifling strictness and heartbreaking suppression, the sisters have each other and their innocence. It's that bond that guides the movie and makes it so compelling.