Emre, a young and dedicated prosecutor, is newly appointed to a small town hit by a water crisis and political scandals. After an initial welcome, he experiences an increasing number of tense interactions and is reluctantly dragged into local politics. When Emre forms a bond with the owner of the local newspaper, pressure escalates under heated rumours.

Compassion is in almost as short supply as water in Emin Alper’s sardonic, seething parched parable about small-town corruption in chokingly patriarchal rural Turkey. Featuring a manhunt that echoes a wild boar hunt and a mirage-like lake whose waters may or may not be toxic, here, the cool filmmaking is subtler than the metaphors. But then, when it comes to homophobia, misogyny, masculine crisis and the other attendant cruelties of the depicted strongman-led society, these are not subtle times.