Symbioz Boards Istanbul Real Estate World Drama Sevda, Unveils Trailer

EXCLUSIVE: Symbioz Films has boarded sales on Swiss Turkish director Ufuk Emiroglu’s debut fiction feature Sevda, set against the backdrop of Istanbul’s cutthroat real estate world, and released a trailer.

The film, which world premiered at the Zurich Film Festival in September, takes its title from protagonist Sevda, a real estate developer who has played an active role in Istanbul’s rampant gentrification with little regard for its impact on the city’s longtime residents.

This changes when a deal she is closing for a major development comes to a halt due to an old Ottoman cemetery on the earmarked site, and an elderly caretaker who refuses to leave.

As Sevda’s buried family past begins to surface, she discovers that her own story is far more entangled with the city’s history than she ever imagined.

Turkey-born Emiroglu’s previous credits include the 2013 Locarno-selected documentary My Father, the Revolution and Me, about her father’s revolutionary communist past, exile and personal struggles.

She co-wrote the screenplay for Sevda with Once Upon A Time In Anatolia actor Ercan Kesal who also appears in the film.

The drama is a Swiss-Turkish-Belgian co-production produced by Paris-based Nadia Turincev and Omar El Kadi; Nicolas Wadimoff and Philippe Coeytaux at Geneva-based Akka Films; Eva Kuperman and Anton Iffland Stettner at Brussels-based Stenola Production, as well as Ersan Congar and Cihan Aslı Filiz at Istanbul-based Bir Film.

Symbioz Films was launched in May by Aleksandar Govedarica as a Europe-based sales and production company specialized in all rights. Its current slate also features Slovenia drama Everything That’s Wrong With You and This is not an Apple, about three Palestinian siblings living in a gang-infested suburb on the edge of Oslo who find salvation in an apple growing community project.