Phases of Matter

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Phases of Matter

2020

1h 11m

Documentary

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Popcornmeter

100%

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6 Reviews

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

Phases of Matter is set in Istanbul's venerable Cerrahpasa Hospital, a unique, state-run teaching hospital in Turkey, where the filmmaker himself was born and where his father has long worked as a doctor. It is a human, curious look at a place where life and death, levity and severity, poetry and confrontation go side by side. This immersive documentary passes through the hospital's darkened corridors from the physical spaces of morgue, operating and observation rooms to the virtual spaces of vital-signs monitors and X-ray machines. With a formal sense of camera movement that simultaneously embraces the unplanned and unexpected, Tortum crafts a vision pitched between the eerily posthuman and the urgently humanist.

Peter Keough

Boston Globe

01/20/2022

3.5/4

The scenes are startling, affecting, and sometimes bizarre but they are not random.

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Clement Tyler Obropta

Film Inquiry

04/17/2022

Tortum traces the hospitals final years with both restlessness and repose, cobbling together a fleeting image of a place on the verge of becoming empty. Its haunting, graceful and not for the faint of heart.

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Joel Fisher

Battle Royale With Cheese

03/17/2022

Phases of Matter is a documentary by Deniz Tortum which may have started in one way and has ended up meaning something totally different and more profound as time has passed.

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Michael J. Casey

Michael J. Cinema

03/15/2022

3.5/5

"Phases of Matter" is a singular work that fully engages the audience by removing anything resembling a plot and characters.

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Sarah Marrs

Lainey Gossip

03/12/2022

This is what Deniz Tortums documentary of Cerrahpaa Hospital does so well, capture the mundanity and humanity of medicine.

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Jennie Kermode

Eye for Film

02/03/2022

4/5

This is a hospital seen from an insider’s perspective, the focus on back corridors and break rooms where staff members cluster round small tables, smoking heavily

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Deniz Tortum

Director

Anna Maria Aslanoglu

Producer

Öykü Canli

Producer

Asli Erdem

Producer

Cem Celal Bilge

Executive Producer

Deniz Tortum

Cinematographer

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Synopsis

Phases of Matter is set in Istanbul's venerable Cerrahpasa Hospital, a unique, state-run teaching hospital in Turkey, where the filmmaker himself was born and where his father has long worked as a doctor. It is a human, curious look at a place where life and death, levity and severity, poetry and confrontation go side by side. This immersive documentary passes through the hospital's darkened corridors from the physical spaces of morgue, operating and observation rooms to the virtual spaces of vital-signs monitors and X-ray machines. With a formal sense of camera movement that simultaneously embraces the unplanned and unexpected, Tortum crafts a vision pitched between the eerily posthuman and the urgently humanist.

Director: Deniz Tortum
Producer: Anna Maria Aslanoglu, Öykü Canli, Asli Erdem
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: Turkish
Runtime: 1h 11m