The Law of the Border

On the surface, Law of the Border, is an action-packed, exciting smuggling drama with a powerful central performance by Yılmaz Güney. Yet beyond the genre elements lays a searing critique of social conditions in southeastern Turkey, where lack of education, joblessness and general hopelessness have left the population little choice but to become outlaws in order to survive. The experience of the film proved important for Güney, just as he was about to embark on his own brilliant directorial career. Law of the Border was rescued and restored by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation; brought to light by WCF advisory board member Fatih Akın and restored by L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna from the wreckage of a single positive print which survived the Turkish military coup d'état in 1980, the film was described as “a work of great visual and dramatic force, of terrific purity and ferocity,'’ by WCF Executive Director Kent Jones.