Album (Albüm) (translated)

Album is a 2016 film that marked Mehmet Can Mertoğlu's feature debut as both writer and director. A co-production between Turkey, Romania, and France, this dramatic comedy follows a married couple who, unable to have children naturally, decide to adopt a baby.

Cüneyt, a high school history teacher, and Bahar, a civil servant at a tax office, are a couple in their late thirties. Determined to hide from everyone around them that the baby is adopted, they set out to create a retrospective photo album fabricating a pregnancy and birth, as if the child were their own. Through this tragicomic endeavor, the film offers a social critique of middle-class anxieties about appearances. Şebnem Bozoklu and Murat Kılıç lead the cast, with Müfit Kayacan among the supporting players. The film premiered in the Critics' Week section of the 69th Cannes Film Festival, where it won an award, and went on to be named best film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.