Please don't spend money on this.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Nice film about traditions, conservatism, freedom and hypocrisy. An uncle and his mother left with five young female nephews after their parents died, spend a whole summer segregating the five to find husbands for them. With the beginning of the summer the five girls pass from high-school, sea, friends and boyfriends to a real prison in a very conservative environment, which get worse everyday. Despite the grace of the five girls who are able to have fun also in the traditional environment, the hypocrisy of their watchers gets unmasked. A very nice film about the struggle between tradition and progress, and the grace and freedom of the girl power.

What a turd of a film! A very good example of orientalist done with all the wrong intentions. It does not reflect anything remotely close to the culture or the region but I don't think its something the so-called director and the script writer would care anyway. I am originally related to the region where the film was set and none of the characters actually behaves, talks or acts anything like those people. It is such an important topic done so careless. I cant even begin to list everything wrong about this picture. Its just so sad that people behind this picture get credit among the most respected platforms in the West. On the other hand, I believe, that was the pure intention of those people after all.. to abuse and exploit a such delicate subject. To sum up in two words: Ugly and fake.

'Mustang' consists of an overhead shot of Selma, one of the sisters in the film, lying on a bed wearing her wedding dress in the gynecologist's chamber with a bulb glowing beneath the sheet covering the lower abdominal regions of her body. This shot of a young girl who has already been forced to marry a complete stranger, now being forced to get her virginity tested on her wedding night visually summarises the whole film in the most succinct and powerful way possible. 'Mustang' is an uninhibitedly feminist tale that throws light on the evils of an oppressive and ultra conservative patriarchal society and how women in third world countries even now feel suffocated by this oppression.What in my eyes makes 'Mustang' special is that even though the film addresses a really important and relevant issue like oppression against women,the director Deniz Gamze Ergüven still manages to retain a spirit of sweetness and innocent intimacy between the sisters which gives us some respite from the atrocious and horrifying aspects of the other scenes in the film. Ergüven juxtaposes the horrors of the scenes depicting the oppression with moments like the opening scenes in the beach or the scene at the football stadium or the scene where Lale learns to drive. These moments have almost a fantasy fairy tale like quality to them as Ergüven using the fluid camera work and lighting, focuses completely on the faces of these girls having fun and expressing themselves during these scenes. It is because of the presence of these scenes epitomising the spirit of youth and sweet bonding between the sisters that the viewer becomes more and more angry with each succeeding scene where their liberties and freedom get intruded upon. A very important theme being explored in the film is the premature and forced loss of youth. We see the house become a 'wife factory' and a symbolic prison for the girls after the opening incident and see the sisters get married off one by one. Due to the way Ergüven spends her time in showing us the bond between these sisters, when they get married off one by one, we start feeling their absence in their home. The concept of a group of girls belonging to a conservative family will remind viewers of Sofia Coppola's 'The Virgin Suicides' although the perspective is different here. 'Mustang' showcases how suffocating a woman's life can be in the orthodox conservative societies in third world countries even in the 21st century. Just like Jafar Panahi's films, Ergüven shows us why the feminist movement advocating equality is still the need of the hour in the world and more so in developing countries like Turkey. Ergüven's camera movements reminded me of the camera movements in the films of the Dardenne brothers due to the extensive usage of hand-held camera. The way Lale gathers her inner strength to defy the customs and defy her family is also reminiscent of the moral awakening of Igor in 'La Promesse'. Ergüven with the help of her cinematographer uses lighting to create a fantasy like visual texture which goes with the tone set by her in much of the film. Along with all the technical elements, the maturity that Ergüven shows with the raw emotions in the film is astonishing for a first time director. The acting is naturalistic and good from everyone. But I will give special mention to Günes Sensoy who plays Lale.My only gripe with the film has more to do with an element in the screenplay than the direction of Ergüven. At a certain point in the film, it is revealed that uncle Erol is a pedophile and he was molesting the girls. I think this was completely unnecessary and it changes the way I look at certain aspects of the film and specially the character of the grandmother. I think this revelation makes the character of the grandmother more likable, but to some extent strips her character of some of the moral complications. Overall, I loved 'Mustang'. It is a film that not only showcases great direction and storytelling, but also deals with a very relevant issue with poignancy and power. Except one unnecessary element in the screenplay, I think the film is pretty brilliant and should be seen by people around the world.

I couldn't understand how this movie got these high scores. It is unfair to all good movies have been produced in the world. The story is universal (it is given)- especially for the Muslim countries- But if we are talking about movies here, if we make critics according the movie lines, sorry but there is no good acting, no good picture, no good storytelling, no honesty... As a Turkish woman I can say that the story is real but the drama in the movie is not acted good so it lost everything. If a girl live in a rural part of Turkey she knows how to act, how to react, how to dress, how to talk. And the real bad part of the story starts there. Although they act according the traditions they may force to marry or raped or tortured. They are not free from the beginning, they are not like big city girls who live in İstanbul. On the other hand the girls in the movie act like city girls and suddenly came to live in a rural part of Turkey in a family which they knew nothing about their philosophy of life, the traditions. They act like New Yorkers. Probably it is because, one of the writers (Alice Winocour) is not Turkish and Deniz Gamze Ergüven (director and writer) I guess didn't spend much time in Turkey especially in the rural areas, didn't listen real stories. While I was watching the movie I felt like the writers asked themselves "What is one of the biggest major problems Turkish woman deal with? Not being free (?!), have to obey elders, behave according the traditions, OK lets match them and write a story on a computer. As I mentioned at the beginning the story line is real but those girls in the movie are not real, they don't fit the girls who live in a rural part of Turkey. Sorry but the movie couldn't give the real drama it is like a newly graduated person's movie. We are not discussing if the story in the movie real or not here, we are discussing the storytelling in a movie. This makes the movie good or bad. There are lots of second world war movies but we remember the movies like Pianist, Schindler's list... Real stories with good storytelling, good picture, good drama...