Turkish cinema rebounded on the international scene when Yavuz Turgul's The Bandit (1997) - pitched between the spaghetti western and a socio-political melodrama - drew three million to the home box office and was a hit with Turkish communities abroad. A month after its release, a pair of impressive Turkish entries showed up at the 1997 Cannes festival: Omer Kavur's A Journey With The Hour Clock, programmed in Un Certain Regard, and Ferzan Ospetek's Hamam, a Turkish-Italian co-production invited to the Directors' Fortnight. Also, Dervis Zaim's debut, Somersault In The Coffin, was invited to several international festivals after being awarded the top prize at the Antalya Festival of Turkish Films.

The run of critical and commercial successes continued at this year's Berlinale, where Yesim Ustaoglu's Journey To The Sun, a Turkish-Dutch-German co-production, was awarded the Blue Angel and the Peace Prizes. In it, Ustaoglu pulls no punches describing the range of prejudice facing a young Turk in Istanbul who befriends a Kurd from the same area of eastern Anatolia. She also touches a sensitive nerve when she has the Turk return home with the body of his dead Kurd friend, only to find his village wiped from the face of the earth in the wake of a highly questionable dam project - the same images that characterised the opening of Yavuz Turgul's The Bandit.

Serdar Akar's Gemide (On-board) introduces yet another talented debut film-maker to Critics' Week. Born in 1964 and a graduate of the Istanbul film school, he worked as an assistant director while directing a half-dozen shorts and documentaries until he found the backing for On-board.

A realist tale, it documents the story of four sailors biding their time smoking pot on a ship - until one decides to go ashore, and gets beaten up and robbed. His pals come to the rescue, catch the thieves and steal back the money - along with a beautiful foreign hooker, who comes from some foreign country and just may be the virgin she claims to be. Ron Holloway