Backdrop fallback

Distant

Distant

Share

Distant

2002

1h 46m

7.1(260 votes)

Drama

Overview

A young man from rural Turkey arrives in Istanbul with dreams of 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.

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Muzaffer Özdemir

Muzaffer Özdemir

Mahmut

Mehmet Emin Toprak

Mehmet Emin Toprak

Yusuf

Zuhal Gencer

Zuhal Gencer

Nazan (as Zuhal Gencer Erkaya)

Nazan Kesal

Nazan Kesal

Lover (as Nazan Kırılmış)

Feridun Koç

Feridun Koç

Janitor

Fatma Ceylan

Fatma Ceylan

Mother

Ebru Ceylan

Ebru Ceylan

Woman (as Ebru Yapıcı)

Bahattin Serter

Nazlı Aydın

Engin Hepsev

Creative team

Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Written by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Produced by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Similar Movies

Lonely Hearts

Lonely Hearts

In the late 1940s, a murderous couple known as the 'The Lonely Hearts Killers' kills close to a dozen people. Two detectives try to nab the duo who find their targets via the personals in the paper.

Notes on a Scandal

Notes on a Scandal

A veteran high school teacher befriends a younger art teacher, who is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old students. However, her intentions with this new "friend" also go well beyond platonic friendship.

My Blueberry Nights

My Blueberry Nights

Elizabeth has just been through a particularly nasty breakup, and now she's ready to leave her friends and memories behind as she chases her dreams across the country. In order to support herself on her journey, Elizabeth picks up a series of waitress jobs along the way. As Elizabeth crosses paths with a series of lost souls whose yearnings are even greater than her own, their emotional turmoil ultimately helps her gain a greater understanding of her own problems...

water baby

A lonely basketball influencer struggles with competition and building his brand.

The Edge of Heaven

The Edge of Heaven

The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.

Velaiyilla Pattathari

Velaiyilla Pattathari

Raghuvaran, who is unemployed for years, gets his dream job but a powerful rival is keen to put him down. Can he take on his adversary?

The Fire Within

The Fire Within

Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.

Hard Candy

Hard Candy

Hayley’s a smart, charming teenage girl. Jeff’s a handsome, smooth fashion photographer. An Internet chat, a coffee shop meet-up, an impromptu fashion shoot back at Jeff’s place. Jeff thinks it’s his lucky night. He’s in for a surprise.

Negresco

Negresco

The wife of a jet-set millionaire takes a holiday in Berlin and poses for racy photographs. These are stolen, a man is killed, and she decamps to the French Riviera with a different photographer, who may also now be in danger.

Prime

Prime

A career driven professional from Manhattan is wooed by a young painter, who also happens to be the son of her psychoanalyst.

Closer

Closer

The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.

Tough Enough

Tough Enough

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.

Rear Window

Rear Window

A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

Together

Together

Elisabeth leaves her abusive and drunken husband Rolf, and goes to live with her brother, Göran. The year is 1975 and Göran lives in a commune called Together. Living in this leftist commune Elisabeth learns that the world can be viewed from different perspectives.

Policewoman

Policewoman

A young police woman is faced with the difficulties between her responsibilities at work and her personal responsibilities.

Silence in Dreamland

Silence in Dreamland

After the death of her husband, silence and loneliness reign in this old lady's house. She made routine her best friend and faith her shelter. Only in her dreams she runs away from those four walls to a timeless magic land where the sea speaks without using words. Her days go by like this; between the real life and dreams… until a street dog comes to her door.

Once Were Warriors

Once Were Warriors

In a violent relationship, it takes a mother’s strength to save herself and her children from the man she loved. Once Were Warriors is a violent love story set against a contemporary urban backdrop.

Dogville

Dogville

A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.

La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita

Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.

Summer in Berlin

Summer in Berlin

An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.

Recommended Movies

Mr. Church

Mr. Church

A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.

Abandoned Man

Abandoned Man

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.

At Eternity's Gate

At Eternity's Gate

Famed but tormented artist Vincent van Gogh spends his final years in Arles, France, painting masterworks of the natural world that surrounds him.

Cassandra's Dream

Cassandra's Dream

The tale of two brothers with serious financial woes. When a third party proposes they turn to crime, things go bad and the two become enemies.

Sleep Dealer

Sleep Dealer

Set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences, three strangers risk their lives to connect with each other and break the barriers of technology.

Inside Llewyn Davis

Inside Llewyn Davis

In Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, gifted but volatile folk musician Llewyn Davis struggles with money, relationships, and his uncertain future.

It's a Wonderful Life

It's a Wonderful Life

George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George's modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business's $8,000 is lost and George's troubles begin.

Belfast

Belfast

Buddy is a young boy on the cusp of adolescence, whose life is filled with familial love, childhood hijinks, and a blossoming romance. Yet, with his beloved hometown caught up in increasing turmoil, his family faces a momentous choice: hope the conflict will pass or leave everything they know behind for a new life.

Adopt a Highway

Adopt a Highway

Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn how to use the internet – he finds an abandoned baby in a dumpster behind the fast food restaurant where he works as a dishwasher. Unsure of what to do, and caught between impulses of kindness and panic, Russ soon realizes this could be his chance at redemption.

I, Daniel Blake

I, Daniel Blake

A 59-year-old carpenter recovering from a heart attack befriends a single mother and her two kids as they navigate the impersonal, Kafkaesque benefits system. With equal amounts of humour, warmth and despair, the journey is heartfelt and emotional until the end.

Manchester by the Sea

Manchester by the Sea

After his older brother passes away, Lee Chandler is forced to return home to care for his 16-year-old nephew. There he is compelled to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his family and the community where he was born and raised.

Penguin Bloom

Penguin Bloom

When an unlikely ally enters the Bloom family's world in the form of an injured baby magpie they name Penguin, the bird’s arrival makes a profound difference in the struggling family’s life.

Dancer in the Dark

Dancer in the Dark

Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

Train Dreams

Train Dreams

A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.

Yellow Letters

Yellow Letters

The marriage of Derya and Aziz is under pressure after losing their jobs because of state arbitrariness and moving to Istanbul to live with Aziz's parents. They and their 13-year-old daughter Ezgi have to redefine their way of life.

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe flees Britain on a ship after killing his friend over the love of Mary. A fierce ocean storm wrecks his ship and leaves him stranded by himself on an uncharted island. Left to fend for himself, Crusoe seeks out a tentative survival on the island, until he meets Friday, a tribesman whom he saves from being sacrificed. Initially, Crusoe is thrilled to finally have a friend, but he has to defend himself against the tribe who uses the island to sacrifice tribesman to their gods. During time their relationship changes from master-slave to a mutual respected friendship despite their difference in culture and religion.

The Festival of Troubadours

The Festival of Troubadours

An unexpected reunion between a traveling musician and his son opens old wounds as the two set out on a long journey to a troubadour festival.

The Fabelmans

The Fabelmans

Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.

Where the Red Fern Grows

Where the Red Fern Grows

Set in the Ozark Mountains during the Great Depression, Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for 2 years to achieve his dream of buying two coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in God as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with "Old Dan" and "Little Ann."