On the eve of the fall of the Ottoman Empire: in the harem of Sultan Abdulhamit II, the odalisque of Italian origin Safiyè dreams of becoming the sultan's first mistress. To achieve her goal, the girl, aided by the eunuch Nadir, is even willing to kill. But when her dream is finally about to come true, her entire world suddenly collapses: the sultan is exiled, the harem is closed, and the odalisques and eunuchs are abandoned to their fate.
Production
Sumptuous harem sets that reek of authentic claustrophobia.
Acting
Marie Gillain's ice-queen descent into irrelevance.
Direction
Özpetek's queer gaze reframes female competition as mutual tragedy.
Director
Ferzan Özpetek
Marie Gillain
Safiye
Alex Descas
Nadir
Malick Bowens
Mithat
Haluk Bilginer
Abdülhamit II
Serra Yılmaz
Gulfidan
Ayla Algan
Valide
Nilüfer Açıkalın
Selma
Selda Özer
Guya
Şerif Sezer
Perran
Başak Köklükaya
Gülbahar
Pelin Batu
Cerkez Cariye
Cansel Elçin
giornalista
Ali Başar
Komutan Halit
Valeria Golino
Anita
Lucia Bosè
Safiye Anziana
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Özpetek, a Turkish-Italian director, made this as a meditation on his own hyphenated identity and the erasure of queer histories within imperial archives.
The harem scenes were filmed in an actual Ottoman palace in Istanbul that was being converted to a hotel—production literally captured a dying world mid-transformation.
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