The Law of the Border (Hudutların Kanunu)

Law of the Border (Hudutların Kanunu) is a Turkish drama shot in 1966 in Şanlıurfa and Mardin and released the following year, directed by Lütfi Ömer Akad from a screenplay by its lead actor, Yılmaz Güney. Alongside Güney, the cast includes Erol Taş, Tuncel Kurtiz and Pervin Par. The story follows Hıdır, a villager who survives by smuggling livestock across the border, caught between the suspicion of the military and the exploitation of local landowners — a portrait the film uses to criticize rural poverty and the region's feudal land system.

Considered one of the founding works of Turkish social-realist cinema, it won the award for best second drama at the 4th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, where Güney also picked up the first major acting prize of his career. Most surviving prints were destroyed during the crackdown that followed the 1980 coup, but the film was restored in 2011 by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation and screened again in the Cannes Classics section that year.