Paris based MPM Premium has picked up international sales for Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster from Turkish director Umut Subasi, which world premieres this week at International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Bright Future competition.

The moving tragicomedy follows four middle-class millennials in Istanbul grappling with financial and social troubles and dealing with demoralising “slight disasters” from unemployment to isolation.

Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster (Sanki Her Şey Biraz Felaket) is the first feature from Subasi, who also wrote and edited the film. The feature stars an ensemble of up-and-coming local Turkish talent - Melis Sevinç, Melisa Bostancıoğlu, İbrahim Arıcı and Mert Can Sevimli - all in their very first leading roles.

Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster is produced by Yunik Film which will also release the title in Turkey. Yunik was founded by Cembre Erul who also produced Umut’s last short film I Don’t Believe In You But Then There Is Gravity in 2018 that won Best Short Film at the Istanbul Film Festival among other prizes.

The film explores the universal anxieties of a generation through a group of characters in their 20s brought together by coincidence, including a student distressed by the daily news, a married engineer never satisfied with his life, an unemployed man living with his parents and a woman who tries to flee abroad because she can’t see a future for herself in Turkey.

MPM Premium said: “As the characters seem lost in translation, Almost Entirely A Slight Disaster speaks a language that feels universal while it offers a relatable mirror to the malaise of a generation with a touch of humour that is irresistible.”

Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster premieres at Rotterdam on January 26.

MPM Premium will host market screenings for the film at the upcoming EFM along with Slony Sow’s Franco-Japanese culinary comedy Umami starring Gérard Depardieu, Sylvie Gautier’s French feature debut Bright Women (Brillantes) and Cláudia Varejão’s queer coming-of-age-drama Wold and Dog.

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