Movie Review: Crimean

KIRIMLI has been adapted from Cengiz Dagci’s first novel “Korkunc Yillar” (Horrible Years), published in 1956. The author who passed away in 2011 has his entire body of work focus on the culture of the Crimean Tatars and the suffering of the Crimean Turks. In the years following the Russian Revolution, Sadik Turan is born in a Crimea where people had hops for better cultural rights and more freedom, but instead, had to face oppression from Russia nationalist politics. During the Stalin era where the oppression is at its peak, Sadik starts school. One morning, he becomes horrified when Red Army soldiers barge into classrooms and declare the mandatory use of the Cyrillic alphabet instead of the Turkish alphabet. And then, he witnesses how they are being robbed of their faith through the demolition of mosques.

With the start of the Second World War, Crimean Turks, just like every people living inside the Soviet Union borders, are drafted and sent to battle. Sadik Turan becomes an officer within the Red Army, and while he struggles to survive and also to protect his fellow soldiers, Sadik is taken prisoner by the Germans.

Being an educated German-speaker, first, he is appointed as a liaison officer at the concentration camp, and then, he is stationed in the German army, after the Berlin administration decided to assemble Muslim Turkish forces with the promise of saving Crimea from the Russians and giving them their freedom back.

Meanwhile, Sadik meets Maria, the love of his life. Maria is a young woman who fights alongside the resistance in Poland where there’s a Nazi invasion. Sadik now walks hand in hand with Maria towards the dream of freeing Crimea and towards the future. 

Superb cinematography and sound with topnotch performance by Murat Yildrim.

My Verdict: 4/5