Times and Winds is the kind of movie that was invented for the word “ineffable”. About everything and nothing, it’s set in a small hillside village on the northwest coast of Turkey and describes the bucolic life, as seen through the increasingly disaffected eyes of three preteens, Omer (Ozkan Ozen), Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali) and Yildiz (Elit Iscan).

Omer spends his days dreaming up ever more elaborate ways to kill his father, the local imam. Yakup is in love with his school teacher. And Yildiz, a doted-up-on daddy’s girl, is given the task of babysitting her baby brother. It’s hardly The Dark Knight, but this is a movie that unfolds quickly, with trippy little digressions (Omer’s patricide plans), breathless steadicam shots, and queasy emblematic portraits of the kids half-buried in the earth (hints of things to come?).

It is, at a guess, about life’s relentless march, about death, rebirth, and the hollow limits of religion in the face of overwhelming nature. You have to see it to get it, but when you’ve got it you’ve got it for good.

15, 110 minutes

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