Retro dystopia in Turkish cinema: A mouthless girl in the shadows speaks through the antenna

Abstract:Generally speaking, the sf genre historically manifested in Turkish cinema through low-budget adaptations of Hollywood narratives with local characters and stories. After the 1990s, however, Turkish cinema explored original narratives, especially sf texts where the comedic and dramatic modes dominated. Moreover, an increasing number of original sf and dystopian films have been produced in Türkiye in the last decade in accordance with increased technology and the globalization of the contemporary moment. This article analyzes the dystopian films Girl with No Mouth (2019), The Antenna (2019), and In the Shadows (2020) to discuss the historical relationship of Turkish cinema with sf in the context of the genre’s cinematic language regarding technology, culture, utopia, dystopia, and disaster. As a result, the features of the concept of the “retro dystopia” and its relationship with these films are revealed.