İLKİN BESTE ÇIRAK

The ticking of a clock. Time strikes in the center of a lonely room. Thoughts follow an unreachable rhythm, creating pressure in the corridors of the intellect. The mind devises a game to find solace in solitude. An object, a memory, a face, a facade—everything can disappear into the relativity of passing time; a silent riot against the alienating apparatuses of order.

The film follows a day in the life of a young woman who spends her time alone in her apartment, sleeping and channeling her energy through objects to escape the expectations of the external world. It addresses the visceral feeling of isolation and inner revolutions, evoking the inevitability of transformation where nothing can hold on anymore—sculpting a stream of consciousness into moving images. In a world where the protagonist creates her own absurd realm of the unreal, she becomes a sovereign reflection of a self that refuses to fulfill social contracts and prevailing norms.

Highlighting the profound tension between individual defiance and the obedience demanded by rule and power, the film focuses entirely on the protagonist's internal terrain. It underscores the psychological portrait of an anti-hero who silently rebels, allowing for a complete redefinition of one's environment through the lens of the marginal.

Press

“Film can think by establishing and depicting relationships between people and things, wrote Alexandre Astruc. In Nigel Gavus' and İlkin Beste Çıraks It's on a day like this... the captivating clarity of this observation in and of the film becomes apparent: a woman lies on a bed covered in white, surrounded by simple — everyday, pop-culturally charged as well as personally symbolic — things. She enters into a dialog with them, touches them, picks them up, moves them and puts them down again. In addition, a stream of thoughts unfolds on the soundtrack that revolves around the small, the world of objects, the very large, the questions of existence in a present outside the image: a film that confronts the limitations of a world surrounded by four walls, a frame surrounded by four sides, with the precision and conciseness of a physical play and a cinematic gaze. Everything is possible, in the smallest of spaces, in cinema as in life.”

“While isolation is an unintentional theme in Ogunnaike's work, it is more explicit in a nearby 16 mm film by Graz-based duo Nigel Gavus and İlkin Beste Çırak. Titled It's on a day like this ... (2021), this sometimes tedious (although entirely relatable) film essay follows a woman who – much like the protagonist in Ottessa Moshfegh's 2018 novel „My Year of Rest and Relaxation“ – has completely retreated into the domestic realm, choosing to sleep the day away or interact, albeit passively, with her belongings.”

“Für Domestic Drama produzierten die Künstler_innen die Arbeit It's on a day like this... (2021), ein digitialisierter 16mm-Film, der das Portrait einer junger Frau zeigt. Diese verbringt ihre Tage damit sich durch Schlaf von der Realität zu befreien. Sie erschafft sich ihr eigenes Reich der Unwirklichkeit aus der Beschäftigung mit den sie umgebenden Dingen und Objekten. Der essayistische Film thematisiert das Gefühl von innerer Isolation und hält das Bild einer traurigen, einsamen und passiven Rebellion gegen die Aussichtslosigkeit ihrer Welt fest.”