KEDI (Ceyda Torun). 80 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (February 17). See listing. Rating NNNN
Ceyda Torun’s Kedi arrives in Toronto just a week after making headlines in New York City, where it scored the largest per-screen gross of the weekend. Will it do as well at the Hot Docs Cinema? Probably. People love cats.
Kedi is about the street cats of Istanbul and the people who care for them. And if that sounds like a thin premise for a feature-length documentary, I’ll just say that 80 minutes of cats wandering into markets and visiting restaurants and jumping around warehouses while affectionate observers share stories about their favourites is positively therapeutic right now.
But it does end up being somewhat more substantial than a cat video it’s also an examination of the human impulse for projection. Torun’s interview subjects can’t help seeing themselves in their furry friends, and each anecdote invariably reveals something essential about its teller.
And the larger portrait of Istanbul as a city whose residents almost unconsciously look out for even the littlest among them is heartening in an era defined by increasing isolationism and scapegoating.
Plus, kittens. So many kittens.
