Mustang

— A troubling tale of empowerment about five spirited sisters that opens at the end of the Turkish school term with the girls horsing around with some of their male classmates by the beach. The world seems light and fun until their innocent games are reported to their uncle as sexually charged and shaming the family. They’re sent to a doctor to make sure they’re still virginal, then locked in their house without access to phones or computers or other “instruments of corruption”. As they try to marry off one of the girls, she balks and manages to marry a boy she loves and with who she’s been having a clandestine relationship, but the other sisters won’t have a choice. They are given lessons to make them good wives, preparing them to be married off. Suitors arrive, not for the girls to consider, but for their uncle to select. The younger sisters have no desire to suffer their fate, but they are virtual prisoners in their barred home and their male-dominated, religious heritage. There’s a calm touch to the direction that almost makes what’s happening more disturbing since it’s entirely told from the girls’ point of view. In the end, only the youngest daughter is able to escape, leaving viewers to see a long road ahead before the situation will change for other women.

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[2015. 97 min. Directed by Deniz Gamze Erguven. Starring Gunes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, and Tugba Sunguroglu.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/movies/review-in-mustang-turkish-sisters-and-traditions-clash.html