Mustang

Mustang (2015) is a French-Turkish drama you can watch online on iFILM. It was the debut feature of director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, shot in a Black Sea village in Turkey, and it earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film along with four César nominations — a striking entrance for a first film.

Five orphaned sisters walk home from school and splash around with some boys on the beach. Nothing happens. Their relatives decide otherwise. The house is locked and bolted, phones disappear, lessons in cooking replace lessons at school, and the machinery of arranged marriages starts moving. The youngest, Lale, watches her sisters disappear into it one by one and begins planning her exit.

Ergüven's camera stays close — uncomfortably close — and the five first-time leads carry every scene without a false note. The film is angry in the way that comes from love rather than ideology, which is rarer than it sounds. Stream Mustang (2015) on iFILM.