Yellow Letters (2026) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for each performance
Take a Drink: for ominous political signs
Take a Drink: for other forms of harassment
Take a Drink: for confrontations
Do a Shot: for cities impersonating cities
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
Turkey has been a country between worlds over the last few decades- well in the process of becoming a part of the European Union, yet ruled with an autocratic bent by Recep Erdoğan for only three fewer years than Putin has controlled Russia.
Yellow Letters is about a family that is reminded of this the hard way when a perceived snub puts them on the wrong side of the government, which never forgets.
A Toast
One of the first images in the film informs us that Berlin is playing Ankara, and the merciless way the government’s mercilessness is depicted makes it no wonder why, or why Hamburg later plays Istanbul. There are enough Turkish people in each to populate a film about Turkish autocracy, sure, but the reason why that’s the case is not unrelated to that autocracy.
The film kicks off with a lot of sharp repartee between our protagonist married couple, an actress and a director. The wife is a firebrand, and while the husband is more reserved, he’s no less passionate about his profession or his views on what is happening to his country. The inciting incident is the former declining to take part in a group photo with the Governor after their joint play- an event so inconsequential you may miss it happening (and certainly its significance).
An ever-tightening noose is set in that moment- like the Book of Job, the State needles at them in various ways, canceling their play, having police search their apartment, harassing those in their orbit enough so that they’re both banned from the university stage. Eventually (and very early- only a quarter of the film in) they just leave the capital, but their ordeal is far from over as the husband is arrested after his social media is combed and enough is found to charge him with the apparently criminal offense of ‘insulting the President’.
Your blood will boil at each constriction, which perhaps inevitably begins to fray their relationship with each other and their teenage daughter. This is a story of the slow but steady degradation living under autocracy engenders in everyone, not just those in its crosshairs.
Beer Two
A lot of plot details and relationships between characters are communicated by implication- don’t let your mind wander watching this one!
Verdict
Yellow Letters is a masterfully rendered descent into powerlessness in the face of authoritarian pressure in present day Turkey.
