Set in a village close to the southwestern city of Burdur, DEVIR focuses on the vanishing rituals of rural life, set around an annual competition involving shepherds. The lifestyle might be hard; the amenities for the families primitive; the landscape unforgiving; but the inhabitants are happy with what they have, desiring nothing other than to ensure their own happiness.
Yet times are changing; Ali (Ali Ozel), the youngest member of the shepherd's family, feels frustrated with life and departs for Istanbul. Director Dervis Zaim contrasts the bleakness of the urban landscape, blighted with pollution and full of impersonal-looking tower blocks, with the snow-capped mountains of the rural lands. One suggests permanence and stability; the other mutability and destruction. Ali finds no other employment other than working in a slaughterhouse, where his wages are regularly subject to "surcharges" from his unscrupulous boss. Returning to his village, Ali sets up a commercial hunting business for city-dwellers seeking to take trophies home to adorn their walls.
If rural life is so subject to commercial pressures, what future exists for it? In one sense, not a lot; we see the bulldozers plowing up the land in preparation for building more "luxury flats" in the village. Yet we as viewers are encouraged to take pleasure in the moment; to enjoy the ways in which the villagers enjoy rime- honored rituals just for the sake of it, without extricating any profit out of them. The film has an underlying sympathy that transcends the social criticism, rendering it a memorable piece of work.
