Burning Days benefits from Alper’s sparse, boiled-dry screenplay and from DP Christos Karamanis’s casually devastating widescreen photography.

A film that works at once as a highly-charged suspenser, a savvy piece of tightly-enclosed world-building and a sharp critique of machismo, populism and their very tangible dangers.

A low-key thriller by western standards, Burning Days is engrossing and atmospheric, ending on an enigmatic note whose accusing tone the Turkish government took personally.

[Director Emin] Alper approaches small-town politics with the baggage of a well-studied academic (and I mean this as a compliment). The particular is universal, and the universal is particular.