Ceylan's Anatolia among Sight & Sound's top films of 2012

Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan's most recent film "Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da" (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) was cited among the top films of 2012 by Sight & Sound magazine this week. The monthly film magazine, published by the British Film Institute (BFI), compiled the list in a poll conducted among 90 international film critics, asking them to name five of their favorite films of 2012. Ceylan's film was in the eighth spot, tying with three other international festival hits, on the list announced on Sight & Sound's website on Monday and published in the magazine's January 2013 issue. The movie shared the same spot with Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu's "Beyond the Hills," Iranian director Jafar Panahi's "This is Not a Film" and David Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis." "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" follows the story of a group made up of a doctor, a prosecutor and a suspect as they search for a dead body in the Anatolian steppes. "Like a nod to Yılmaz Guney's 1982 classic ‘Yol' [The Way], Nuri Bilge Ceylan's film takes on the multi layers of Turkish life in an epic road movie. Perfect cinema, for me," Suzy Gillett, the international relations manager of the London Film School, commented to Sight & Sound. "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia," billed by critics both in Turkey and overseas as Ceylan's "best to date," has won several international awards, including the Grand Prix of the Cannes film festival, where it had its world premiere in 2011. American director Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" topped the Sight & Sound list while Portuguese director Miguel Gomes' "Tabu" ranked second and Michael Haneke's "Amour" (Love) came in third.