abdullah (2014)

Written and directed by the Duke Mitchell Club’s own Evrim Ersoy, abdullah offers a day in the life of its titular antihero (played by Gabriel Horn), apparently too unassuming and inconspicuous even to merit an upper-case letter for his first name. A short, overlooked Turkish cabbie in London, he drifts in loneliness and silence along alienating borderlines of class, race, religion and sexuality – until at night, when these suffocating tensions find their outlet, and he can start all over again.

Lit, shot, scored and edited to suggest the fragmentation of a not-quite-so-ordinary man’s mind under quotidian pressures, this short film is a mute Taxi Driver reconfigured for a very different time and place. Recommended.

abdullah premieres at FrightFest, Monday 25th August, 2014

Anton Bitel