Paper LivesMovies like Paper Lives
- Key Features:
- Social commentary, Poverty, Childhood trauma, Found family, Mental health, Urban decay, Toxic waste, Father-son relationship, Coming-of-age, Social issues, Compassion
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Drama enthusiasts, Social issue viewers, International cinema fans, Character-driven
- Emotional Arc:
- Despair → Hope
Paper Lives

In the streets of Istanbul, ailing waste warehouse worker Mehmet takes a small boy under his wing and must soon confront his own traumatic childhood.
Paper Lives
A young man from rural Turkey arrives in Istanbul with dreams working on a ship and stays with a cousin while he searches for work. Over time, the former’s struggles to find employment and the latter’s troubles and disappointments strain their relationship and living situation.

A left-wing journalist whose wife died while giving birth to his son during a military coup returns to his family's farm. Estranged from his father for turning his back on the family and wasting his life with political activism instead, he tries to reconnect with him so that his son will have a place to live as his health is deteriorating due to the extensive torture he had to endure.

Three strangers with one thing in common — the same father — come to a Turkish village to bury him, and learn about him and each other.

After running away from his negligent parents, committing a violent crime and being sentenced to five years in jail, a hardened, streetwise 12-year-old Lebanese boy sues his parents in protest of the life they have given him.

Yusuf and his best friend Memo are pupils at a boarding school for Kurdish boys, secluded in the mountains of Eastern Anatolia. When Memo falls mysteriously ill, Yusuf is forced to struggle through the bureaucratic obstacles put up by the school's repressive authorities to try to help his friend. But by the time the adults in charge finally understand the seriousness of Memo's condition and try to get him to the hospital, the school has been buried under a sudden, heavy snowfall. With no way out and now desperate to reach help, teachers and pupils engage in a blame game where grudges, feelings of guilt and hidden secrets emerge, as time ticks mercilessly on and threatens to run out.

Salih is a mechanic and the son of a respected barber named Ali. A woman named Tina arrives at Cholera Street, where she takes up residence and works as a prostitute.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

Two soldiers return home from their military service in southeastern Turkey with disabilities.

A tragicomedy dramatizing how an innocent villager is driven into the crime world only to collect enough cash to make his biggest dream come true: Return to his village home and marry the girl next door.

Zuhtu, a nosy hawker who sells meatballs, one night finds a young girl escaping from her cruel relatives. He intends to help the girl but this costs him too much.

Yusuf is released from prison after serving a ten year sentence. Because of unexpected problems at his sister’s house, he finds himself in a cheap hotel where he meets a man, a woman, and a child who will change his life in unexpected ways…

In a small, poor village leaning over high rocky mountains, the villagers are simple and diligent people who struggle to cope with a harsh nature. They earn their living off the earth and a few animals they feed. Fathers always prefer one of their sons. Mothers command their daughters ruthlessly. Ömer, the son of the imam, wishes hopelessly for the death of his father. When he understands that wishful thinking does not have any concrete results, he begins to search for childish ways to kill his father. Yakup is in love with his teacher, and one day after seeing his father spying on the teacher he dreams too, like Ömer, of killing his father. Yıldız studies and tries to manage the household chores imposed by her mother. She learns with irritation about the secrets of the relationship between men and women.

An aspiring filmmaker visits his parents and begins to devise a movie. Amidst creating and casting for the film, he encounters with family & friends who struggle with their own problems, dreams and life.

In the southeast region of Turkey, the Kurdish family of Altun lives in a small mountainside village plagued by a 25-year war that makes their daily lives a hellish struggle. As the war intensifies, the family is forced to migrate west to the city of Istanbul.

Man was made to be happy for simple reasons and unhappy for even simpler ones – just as he is born for simple reasons and dies for even simpler ones... Isa and Bahar are two lonely figures dragged through the ever-changing climate of their inner selves in pursuit of a happiness that no longer belongs to them.

Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.

Sent to prison along with his mother after her drug conviction, a young boy develops a warm, tender relationship with a political prisoner.

The three human characters are an old man, an old woman, and a young boy, who wander among the natural wonders and give the camera soulful looks.

Entrenched in a midlife crisis, Aziz seeks solace from his mundane job, lonesome friends and rowdy family while pretending to have his act together.

A biopic about the Turkish vocal artist Müslüm Gürses. Born into a poor household, Muslum found his redemption in music from the initial trauma that lingered over his musical and personal life as internalizing the grief. He rose through his ashes of shattered dreams like a phoenix. He walked in darkness, sang songs filled with sorrow which stirred people's souls and created a cult following. They were calling him "Baba" (The Father).

A group of drug-influenced lumpen teenagers from the suburbs of the city descends into the center where they do not belong, where they are excluded. They adopted a brutal method to seize rights that were not granted to them. Unaware of what will happen to them, cheerful and well-to-do university students are helpless in the face of this gun-wielding mob that suddenly raids the bar where they are having fun.

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

A story in four parts is told from the perspective of two children, showing life in school, in nature, with family and at home. All of this unfolding along with the seasons. The Small Town depicts life in the village, while also portraying the relationships between members of a small-town family, in a long centerpiece scene around a campfire with family members talking about the past, life and its disappointments. Both brother and sister witness the complexities and darkness of the adult world, as well as the mysteries of nature and wildlife.

Freed after a lengthy term in a juvenile detention center, convicted child killer Jack Burridge finds work as a deliveryman and begins dating co-worker Michelle. While out on the road one day, Jack notices a distressed child, and, after reuniting the girl with her family, becomes a local celebrity. But when a local newspaper unearths his past, Jack must cope with the anger of citizens who fear for the safety of their children.

Fresh out of university, a Turkish young man with literary aspirations returns to his home village, and to his father, a debt-ridden man with a gambling problem.

In the remote and undeveloped eastern Black Sea region, a six-year-old boy (Yusuf) wanders through the woods searching for his lost father, trying to make sense of his life.His father is a beekeeper whose bees have disappeared unexpectedly, threatening his livelihood. A bizarre accident kills the father.There is little dialogue or music in the film. The three main characters (Yusuf and his parents) are all fairly taciturn, and the soundtrack is filled out with the sounds of the forest and the creatures that live there.The environment is a recurring theme.

Sailors want to remain in their small world, which is warm and cozy and full of lies, but their routine life turns upside down when one of them gets mugged and badly beaten.

Poet Yusuf (35-38) returns to his childhood hometown, which he hadn't visited for years, upon his mother's death. He is faced with a neglected, crumbling house. Ayla, a young girl (17-19) awaits him there. Yusuf has been unaware of the existence of this distant relation who had been living with his mother for five years; He stays by his dead mother's bedside for a while on the morning of his return...

An ingenuous countryman Ali Nazik migrates to Istanbul and meets producer Mr. Muhsin to have his first album.

A feature film that tells the story of the director's grandfather who was forced to leave Crete in the 1920s during the Greek-Turkish population exchange.

From the youth directed novel of the same name by Greogor Tressnow comes a film by Detlev Buck that is a realistic portrait of life in the section of Berlin called Neukölln. It’s about power and weakness, delinquents and victims, and the difficulties a 15-year-old faces in a poor and criminal environment.

With the mayoral election approaching, the newly-appointed state prosecutor of a small town suffering from a water supply crisis gradually descends into trouble after a young local woman is raped.

Orhan who lived in London for years and did not come back to Turkey agrees to help Deniz -a famous director- edit his first book. Deniz has been living in a mansion with his family which started to lose its old brightness and power. Orhan finds himself in the middle of Deniz's complicated relationships, mysterious friends and stange family members. This is the first movie of Ferzan Ozpetek which is shot in Turkey after a long time. It is also based on his own book which has the same name with the movie.

Two poor men try to find a television as a last wish for the terminally ill brother of one of them.

Diagnosed with a terminal illness, a single mother encounters a suave bachelor as she grapples with the future of her headstrong six-year-old.

Based on a true story set in 1948, customs officer Mehti is faced with the duty of formally setting up the border between Turkey and Syria, dividing his hometown. He is unaware of the pain that will eminently unfold, as families, languages, cultures and lovers are both ripped apart and clash head on in a village once united.

A high school graduate, Yusuf could not pass the university entrance exam. Writing poetry is his greatest passion and some of his poems are being printed in various obscure literary journals. But neither these poems, nor the rapidly falling price of the milk they sell, are being of any benefit to Yusuf and Zehra's lives. When Yusuf finds out about Zehra's secret affair with the town's stationmaster he gets disconcerted. Will he find the way to cope with his anxiety for the unknown future, the rapid change that he is going through and the pain of taking a step into adulthood and leaving his youth behind

He is a civil servant in the bland state office. His whole life changes when his reports get mixed up in the hospital and he gets news that he's going to die very soon.

Mermer family, who has been managing a restaurant called “Anatolian flavors” in Haydarpasa train station for generations, consist of 8 members. Even though this family leads a quiet simple life, they will end up finding themselves in complicated situations. Moreover, this family has been keeping a secret for a long time and it just can’t come out at any cost..

Francesco and Marta run a husband-and-wife design company in Rome. When Francesco's aunt dies in Istanbul he travels there to sort out the hamam Turkish steam bath that she left him. He finds a love and warmth in his relatives' Istanbul home that is missing from his life in Italy.

A group of men lead a search for a victim of a murder to whom a suspect named Kenan and his mentally challenged brother confessed. However, the search is proving more difficult than expected as Kenan is fuzzy as to the body's location. As the group continues looking, its members can't help but chat among themselves about everyday life, as the conversations turn more and more profound and existential.

Burdened by troubles and caught between cultures, Riza takes a job as a mall Santa and finds that real life may not be so different from make believe.

An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.

This drama depicts the misery of neglected children in big cities. 13 years old Bruno is of a good family, but since the death of his grandmother he spends most of his time alone, in a phantasy world, while his mother is away at work. But then he befriends the violent Jean-Roger, who's from a severely disturbed family, where nobody cares what he's doing. In school Jean-Roger drives their teacher into despair just for fun. To separate the two boys, she starts to stimulate Bruno's interests by giving him extra lessons. When Jean-Roger fears loosing his one and only friend, he becomes even more aggressive.

A young Kyrgyz immigrant tries to eke out a living in Moscow after abandoning her newborn and fleeing the hospital.

As he pedals through the streets of Paris to deliver meals, Souleymane recounts his story. In two days, he has to go through his asylum application interview, the key to obtaining papers, but Souleymane is not ready.

A young art teacher hopes to be transferred to Istanbul after completing his mandatory duty in a remote village school in Anatolia. After accusations of inappropriate contact with a student surface, his hopes of escape fade and he descends further into an existential crisis.

Accompanied by a ward, a prisoner travels to his hometown to reconnect with his daughter and make amends, but a tragic truth mars his journey.

In a busy life, Copi is a father who tries to teach the right way to his son, Paste. But - What is the correct path?

An aggressive police officer tries to solve the mystery behind consecutive murders. While doing so, he must fight against his inner demons.

Şaban, who works as a clerk in a factory, is madly in love with Bahar, who works as a secretary in the same factory and attends university thanks to the financial support of the famous oil tycoon Adnan Bıçakçı. However, Bahar has her eye on the famous athlete Erkan. After Adnan Bıçakçı reveals that Bahar is his granddaughter, she is kidnapped by gangsters. However, the only person who tries to rescue her is not her boyfriend Erkan, but Orta Direk Şaban.

The son of a wealthy businessman finds solace in drugs and alcohol when he breaks up with his childhood love.

After serving time in prison for his brother's crime, a man warily reunites with family, finding hope and healing in a life-changing bond with his niece.

Separated from his daughter, a father with an intellectual disability must prove his innocence when he is jailed for the death of a commander's child.

In one of the poorest areas of Paris, a school counselor devotes herself to working with disadvantaged students, while facing challenges of her own.

An 8-year-old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.

Igor, aged 15, and his father Roger deal in housing and peddling illicit labor in the outlying districts of Liege, Belgium. Scams, lies and swindling rule their lives. When one of his father’s illegal workers gets injured on the job and asks Igor to promise to take care of his wife and baby, Igor finds himself at a crossroad. He wants to keep the promise, but the price would be to betray his father.

A recovering drug addict is granted a day’s leave from rehab and returns to Oslo, where he reconnects with friends, faces the weight of his past, and struggles with uncertainty about his future. Over the course of one day, he drifts through encounters that reflect his longing for connection and his deep sense of alienation.

After being sent to a youth detention centre, 18-year-old Andrej has to fight for his place within the group of inmates while getting closer to Željko, their informal leader, and struggling to keep his repressed secret in the dark.

After the death of his wife and father, Kudret, who has always lived by the book, decides to go on a road trip to save a girl.

A gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.

This film follows two Belgrade youths on their rise to gangster legends in a decaying society.

A love story between a poor man and a rich girl. The rich girl's father tries to prevent their marriage and he declares a war against the poor boy's family.

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.

Scientists trying to solve the environmental crisis of pollution devise a way to send the collected garbage into space via rocket ships. When this garbage starts to land on alien planets, the outraged aliens head to Earth for revenge. King Shakir and his family must do their best to protect the world from alien destruction.

When Tsanko Petrov, a railroad worker, finds millions of lev on the train tracks, he decides to turn the entire amount over to the police. Grateful, the state rewards him with a new wristwatch… which soon stops working. Meanwhile, Julia Staikova, the head of PR for the Ministry of Transport, loses his old watch. Here starts Petrov’s desperate struggle to get back not only his old watch, but his dignity.

As children, Nick and his little brother take care of their baby brother while their mother drinks herself senseless. But the baby dies, and both brothers blame themselves. Many years later, Nick is out of prison after serving time for an assault. He drinks, lives in a shelter and tries to help an old friend. When their mother dies, Nick meets his brother at the funeral. The brother, who remains nameless, is a single father to a young boy, but also supports a drug habit that is spiraling out of control. When an opportunity presents itself, he becomes a drug dealer to secure his son's future. Eventually, the two brothers meet again.

Christine’s life has not been easy lately. Her lonely routine is divided between free food banks distributions and wandering the streets. On a cold winter night she founds Suli, an 8-year-old Eritrean boy, sobbing in front of her shelter. Christine understands that he is lost and has been separated from his mother. Bounded by their marginal condition, they embark together on an emotional journey to find Suli’s mother in the underground world of Paris...

Year 1977, a September morning in Ankara... Yilmaz tries to rush his pregnant wife Neriman to the hospital and he crushes into Omer's car. This accident causes Omer's pregnant wife Inci, who was in the back seat, to have a pre-term labor. The babies are born on the same day. They see each other for the first time... This accident is the threshold of the coincidences that bring Ozgur and Deniz together.

A newly reunited father and son grapple with new beginnings after tragedy, but can they manage to fill the void left by a beloved wife and mother?

A tale about a strange young man, Bulcsú, and the fellow ticket inspectors on his team who work aboard the subterranean Budapest Metro. A tale about racing along the tracks, and about a mysterious serial killer. And a tale about love.

Claudio is a construction worker living in the outskirts of Rome. He's happily married and his wife is pregnant with their third child. However, a dramatic event comes to upset this simple and happy life.

Temmuz is an openly gay sculptor living at a flat with his dog in Istanbul. He lives a bohemian lifestyle and has a happy go lucky, carefree, eccentric (such as believing in good luck charms) character, frequently distracting him from his work as a children's book illustrator, and eventually leading him to be abandoned by his boyfriend via e-mail. He is given solace and affection by her wealthy mother, who is fully supportive of him, and best friend and co-worker, Beste. In the meantime, he keeps seeing a young man in his dreams, who repeatedly calls him for help and rescue. One day he runs into this guy while getting on the bus, who is accompanied by his mother, and helps them get into their home as the young man was born without limbs. From then on, two lives would collide into each other, starting a brotherhood full of discoveries and mutual help.

Qinawi, a physically challenged peddler who makes his living selling newspapers in the central Cairo train station, is obsessed with Hanuma, an attractive young woman who sells drinks. While she jokes with him about a possible relationship, she is actually in love with Abu Siri, a strong and respected porter at the station who is struggling to unionize his fellow workers to combat their boss' exploitative and abusive treatment.

Francie and Joe live the usual playful, fantasy filled childhoods of normal boys. However, with a violent, alcoholic father and a manic depressive, suicidal mother the pressure on Francie to grow up are immense. When Francie's world turns to madness, he tries to counter it with further insanity, with dire consequences.

A young girl lost in the loneliness and boredom of reality finds solace in an ill boy, whom she can visit in a surreal dream world that she drew in her school composition book.

Through his work at a morgue, an incarcerated young man trying to build a new life starts to come to terms with the crime he committed.

In 1950, amidst the ravages of the Korean War, Sergeant Süleyman stumbles upon a a half-frozen little girl, with no parents and no help in sight and he risks his own life to save her, smuggling her into his army base and out of harm’s way.

Two resentful, singer brothers Hakan and Ozan who can't get along well. Meet again in their father's funeral. Even though they want to get back to their daily lives after the funeral, their father's will won't allow it. They will take a journey with their dead father's old car in order to carry out his bequest which is to sing at a wedding in Urla.

After weeks of traveling through Europe, the immature William finds himself in Copenhagen, the place of his father’s birth. He befriends the youthful Effy, who works in William’s hotel as part of an internship program, and they set off to find William’s last living relative. Effy’s mix of youthful exuberance and wisdom challenges William unlike any woman ever has. As the attraction builds, he must come to grips with destabilizing elements of his family’s sordid past.

Aydın is a hotel owner and a retired actor in rural Turkey. As winter emerges he begins navigating the conflicts within the relationships with his wife, sister and existence.

When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.

Kemal, unaware that his father is a mafia boss, sells cotton candy at train stations. After his father is killed, his inheritance is divided. Kemal begins visiting the establishments of Istanbul's most notorious thugs one by one to reclaim his father's inheritance, and gradually gains a reputation.

From an intoxicating fantasy to a dangerous affair, a wealthy married woman finds her life irreversibly shattered after picking up an unpublished novel.

At 2 Ela lost her ability of seeing and hearing because of a severe illness. And then she became a total disappointment of her family due to her untamed behaviors. But everything changed after an unorthodox teacher stepped into their lives to educate Ela while healing himself.

A squad of unsuspecting cops go through a trapdoor to Hell when they stumble upon a Black Mass in an abandoned building.

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

Kaan and Mete, co-hosts of a mid 1990s radio show called Kaybedenler Kulübü (Losers' Club), struggle to deal with their daily lives after their show becomes an instant hit. Kaan meets Zeynep, the girl of his dreams, but their relationship comes under pressure as the show continues to stir controversy and attract fans from every segment of Istanbul society.

Working in a ferry as a waiter, Ayzek, having a defect with his front teeth, dreams to get his front teeth fixed and to marry his girlfriend, Songül. The news gets out that the ferry company is turning over the management to a new one and the whole crew is to be interviewed. When the interviewer arrives on board, Ayzek’s world is turned upside down.

During summer vacation in a beachside town, 16-year-old Deniz seeks the affection of his childhood crush and navigates a love triangle.

Seyit, a resourceful doorman of a middle class apartment in Istanbul, finds himself in a struggle for power when the new superintendent decides to crack down on his slack attitude.

In an eastern Turkish town, suitors knock on the door of the mayor and father of three beautiful daughters who choose to follow their own paths.

Cagalera and Moloteco are two teenagers from San Gregorio Atlapulco who are desperate to get out and move up and away from oppressive circumstances. When they hear of an opportunity to buy a spot in the electrician’s union, which could transform their lives, they quickly devolve into the criminal, adult underworld of Mexico City in a bid to buy their freedom.

A young Anatolian Greek, entrusted with his family's fortune, loses it en route to Istanbul and dreams of going to America.

The story of a minibus driver and a fairytale princesss nestling under the wing of timeless friendship in an ordinary neighborhood.

A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.

Arrested while a student in university, Yusuf is released from prison after ten years. He returns home and is welcomed by his sick and elderly mother. Soon he will meet Eka, a beautiful Georgian girl who is a sex worker, and love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and elude loneliness.


