All-In
It's summertime, busy weeks lie ahead for Ismail and Hakan, both employed at the Nashira Resort, a large, international, all-inclusive resort on the Turkish Riviera. 18-year-old Ismail has dropped out of school and dreams of becoming a hairdresser, but works in the hotel kitchen for now. Hakan, a 25-year-old college dropout, is the lifeguard at the resort's aquapark. The two men hope their jobs will enable them to get ahead in life and at least learn English. Who knows, maybe they can go to the US someday.
Though they are obviously very different people, they have become good friends. Ismail has grown more self-assured through his work, whereas Hakan has begun to feel increasingly invisible and insignificant.
For two summers, the Belgian-Turkish director Volkan Üce has followed the two Turkish men trying to realize their dreams, even if just partly. The big question, however, is whether those dreams are actually worth all the effort.
Pre-film:
So We Live
Rand Abou Fakher | België | 2020 | 15' | Arabic spoken | English subtitles
A family living in a war torn country spends what seems to be a normal evening together. Their conversations shift between casual matters of daily life and survival.
Live Q&A with the filmmakers
On Saturday August 21 en Tuesday August 24, both Volkan Üce and Rand Abou Fakher will be present for a Q&A with the audience.
Saturday 21 August | 16.10h | Rialto De Pijp
Tuesday 24 August | 21.30h | De Balie. Click here for tickets.
VOLKAN ÜCE (1981, Belgium) is a self-taught filmmaker who studied and worked at the University of Antwerp. His first feature-length documentary Displaced world premiered at DOK Leipzig 2017 and investigated the identity crisis of third-generation Turks growing up in the Low Countries. In his latest documentary, All-in, screening at WCA, Kurdish boys discover Western consumer society at an all-in hotel in Turkey.
