"Encyclopedia of Istanbul": a thought-provoking series.

This year, Netflix has released the series "Encyclopedia of Istanbul" by screenwriter and director Selman Nacar (1990, Turkey).

Nacar's first two productions - "Entre dos amaneceres" (2021) and "Herida de vacilación" (2023) - have in common that their protagonists must make a moral decision. For both, the young director has accumulated awards. For the first, he won the award for Best Feature Film at the Turin Film Festival and was nominated for the New Directors Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival and the Horizon Award at the Venice Film Festival. For the second, it won Best International Feature Film at the Zurich Film Festival and Best Director at the Arras Film Festival.

"Encyclopaedia of Istanbul" is a Turkish series that moves away from clichés, that is completely different. It tells the story of two women, a young woman - Zehra - who, full of illusion and vitality, moves from her province to Istanbul to begin her university studies. The other, Nesrin, is a mature woman who oozes sadness and wants to leave Istanbul.

The series raises issues such as identity, life choices, tensions between tradition and modernity, the desire for integration and the need for emancipation, among others. Perhaps the success that, according to Begoña Alonso (ELLE), it has had among Turkish women is due to the fact that it deals with latent issues in contemporary Turkish society.

Leaving home and arriving in Istanbul, an environment so different from her childhood, Zehra questions her own beliefs and values, experiences moments of doubt, rebellion and faith, and these are narrated with great delicacy. 

On the other hand, despite the generational difference, and a stormy beginning in the relationship between Zehra and Nesrin, as the series progresses both women grow in knowledge, understanding and mutual enrichment.in 2024, in an interview to "The circular Group" Nacar stated: "stories must be told from the heart". It may be that in the face of the rational predominance that - as cultural heirs of Descartes - is predominant in our Western way of thinking, we are facing a different - more Eastern - way of telling stories. The protagonists of this series pose a multitude of dilemmas, but all of them are left open, perhaps an invitation to each viewer to make their own reflections. Yes, it is a series that makes you think, and for this alone it is worth watching.