Palme d’or-winning unfinished YOL is 35 years later still Turkey’s most
important film and with its topics more contemporary than ever. Finally,
it has been restored and completed. YOL – THE FULL VERSION recounts, as in Yılmaz Güney’s original script, six, rather than five stories about Turkish and Kurdish prisoners. Each of them attempts to get his life back on track during a week’s leave from prison. For 35 years, the fate of these men and their wives have moved audiences around the world. YOL – THE FULL VERSION is a piece of Turkish-Kurdish film history that is more contemporary than ever. The work is a timeless portrait of a society whose concepts of honor and moral compass are the downfall of men and women alike.

YOL (1982) and YOL – THE FULL VERSION (2017) are films by Yılmaz Güney which Şerif Gören, his long-term assistant, was in charge of shooting. During this process, Yılmaz Güney – like the protagonists of his film – was imprisoned on the island of Imralı and then in Isparta: he could not direct the film himself. He had been condemned to lifelong imprisonment on a politically-motivated charge of murder. Yılmaz Güney convinced the only recently released Şerif Gören to take over directing in his stead. Further works of Yılmaz Güney include THE FATHER [BABA] from 1971, THE POOR ONES [ZAVALLILAR] from 1975 and THE WALL [DUVAR] from 1984.