Hesitation Wound – Muslim International Film Festival

Writer and Director: Selman Nacar

Part of the Muslim International Film Festival running for only a few days in London, understated Turkish drama Hesitation Wound is a typical film festival entry focusing on a small-scale personal trauma as a lawyer tries to defend her client while also dealing with the impending death of her mother on life support in a local hospital. Blending the psychological pressure of the two environments with a dramatic court case involving a factory murder, Selman Nacar’s 80-minute movie sustains its momentum well.

Lawyer Canan is troubled by a decision to switch off her mother’s life support machines and to donate her organs when a key witness in her controversial murder case refuses to appear. Running around the city to track down the people who can help her argument, Canan’s two worlds collide with important effects on her work and personal life.

Nacar’s film has a gripping quality that uses the excitement of courtroom drama tropes to explore the rapid decline of its central lawyer character. Her first appearance in front of the judge is not the long days of testimony but Nacar leaps straight into closing arguments in what becomes a disrupted period of interaction as ceilings fall down, process is overthrown and the judge permits activity out of order, all of which feed into Canan’s increased sense of dislocation.

Some of the best moments involve the two lawyers in contention, their summing up a vicious battleground that Nacar captures well and the acrimony between the two version of the story presented in court is palpable but, primarily, Canan’s determination is to ‘save’ her client, an attitude that becomes a personal crusade as some theatrical statements and accusations are made that are quite exciting in the moment. At the same time, many of these seem unlikely, at least that the evidence would only be presented in the closing statements, but Canan’s impassioned insistence is well linked to her growing desperation to control events around her.

The scenes in the hospital are sympathetic, capturing the difficulty facing Canan and her sister as they also adopt quite different positions on what to do next and both actors convey the pressure and sadness of the situation. As Canan, Tülin Özen looks drawn and troubled throughout, her professional demeanor and choices affected by her private grief.

Hesitation Wound, referring to accumulated physical hurts prior to a suicide attempt, doesn’t have an eventual point to make leaving both of its narratives relatively unresolved which is a shame because there is some really strong character and scenario work in this film. But Nacar controls the tension well across the film, creating empathy for the lead and interest in the complex forces shaping her experience.

Hesitation Wound is screening at the Muslim International Film Festival from 30 May – 2 June.