"Distant," that's more like a warning than a title . . . . The two leads will eventually clash, but not enough to make this offering worthy of sitting through.

| Jun 5, 2021

There is plenty to admire here, but the movie is a gaunt affair, with something ruinously washed-out about it.

| Dec 14, 2017

Deeply compassionate and frequently amusing, qualifying as a minor miracle of humanely observant filmmaking.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 28, 2005

A beautifully made, unapologetically artistic piece of work.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 24, 2004

Ultimately, it becomes a movie about the feeling of being alive, the sensation of existence. It's a movie, in a way, about everything.

| Jul 23, 2004

Straightforward, droll, brutally honest and arresting, if somewhat stately in progress.

| Jul 23, 2004

Stuffed with unspoken thoughts and unspeakable feelings

| May 26, 2004

Few recent films have been so accomplished in capturing the way people drift through their lives, unable to communicate their emotions and feelings.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 18, 2004

There is no simple sense of uplift in Distant. But there is an exhilaration to revealing the human condition, and Ceylan is ever on the lookout.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 14, 2004

This precisely paced, sensitively performed drama speaks volumes about the growing distance that modern urban living is putting between people who would otherwise have so much in common.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 14, 2004

Unwanted guests have a benefit: They can remind us of our own dislikes and vulnerabilities, and help us come to terms (or not) with them.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 30, 2004

The film takes place in Turkey, but its dynamic could be transplanted anywhere -- maybe to our own families.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 9, 2004

A Chekhovian tale of major artistic power.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 8, 2004

A sublime treat for anyone with a taste for subtly rendered, almost purely cinematic expression.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 26, 2004

A doleful Turkish masterpiece.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 25, 2004

Has much to say about solitude and friendship and just plain coping with life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 12, 2004

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's wry, modest meditation on pettiness works on a minimalist scale.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 11, 2004

Ceylan, who also served as cinematographer, frames the affecting, unstudied performances in gorgeously chosen shots and nonevents that sometimes teeter on the edge of comedy before knocking us breathless with their emotional power.

| Original Score: A | Mar 10, 2004

A movie of quiet revelations that is itself quite surprising.

Full Review | Mar 9, 2004

The entire film is stitched together from a collection of long shots that stress the expansive emotional distance between the film's characters.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 10, 2003