Reis Çelik’s “Night of Blindness” brings Shanghai thriller attention, drawing on his 1980s escape from Turkey’s coup

“Night of Blindness,” the Turkish director Reis Çelik’s tense black-and-white thriller, has emerged as an early front-runner for the Golden Goblet at the Shanghai International Film Festival, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film’s story centers on fear and uncertainty, and Çelik’s approach ties the movie to his own recollections from Turkey’s 1980 military coup period, framing private trauma as a more universal source of dread for viewers.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Çelik described how his escape from Turkey during the coup years informed the film’s emotional core. He said he turned that personal experience into a broader examination of what happens when people feel trapped, watched, or unable to rely on institutions, translating the pressure of that era into the thriller’s atmosphere.

The Hollywood Reporter characterizes “Night of Blindness” as a “tightly wound” film in which suspense builds rather than releases, and notes that the production has drawn festival momentum early in the Shanghai competition cycle. As an early Golden Goblet contender, it is positioned alongside other major international releases vying for one of the festival’s highest honors.

Çelik’s positioning matters for festival audiences because Shanghai’s top prize is widely watched by distributors and sales teams seeking global audiences for non-Hollywood films. For a thriller that aims to make fear legible on screen, the festival slot also increases the likelihood of wider regional and international attention, including the attention that can affect how films are subsequently marketed and scheduled for release.

Beyond the festival context, Çelik’s comments underline how filmmakers often draw on lived experience to shape a film’s emotional register, even when the narrative is fictional and the specific events on screen are not presented as documentary. The Hollywood Reporter account makes clear the connection is thematic and experiential, rooted in Çelik’s own escape during the coup period rather than in a direct reenactment of a particular incident.

The next steps for the film will follow the festival’s competitive schedule and programming decisions, which determine what juries see and which titles ultimately contend for the Golden Goblet. For now, “Night of Blindness” remains notable primarily for its early stature in the Shanghai lineup and for how its director’s personal history has been cited as central to the film’s tension and tone.