‘Sayara’ Director Can Evrenol Talks Tackling Rape-Revenge In His Latest Film
Writer and director Can Evrenol is known for pushing boundaries with his work. Shocking audiences with his feature film debut, Baskin, Evrenol is no stranger to confronting taboos and, in fact, relishes in the opportunity to channel audience expectations. And he does just that in his latest feature, Sayara, a heart-wrenching rape-revenge film about a sister’s quest for revenge.
In the film,
As a kid, Sayara’s father trained her in martial arts combat. As an adult, her skills are kept secret as she works as a janitor in an Istanbul gym. When her sister is killed by the gym owner and his powerful friends, Sayara channels her hidden talents to go on a revenge-obsessed, extremely gory warpath to make them pay.
We spoke with Evrenol at the 2025 HARD:LINE Film Festival about approaching the rape-revenge genre, finding the perfect Sayara, and the surprising romance of the film.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Dread Central: Why did you want to tackle a film like this, a rape revenge narrative?
Can Evrenol: A couple of reasons. First of all, I think all my films are more about style over content and then gathering the content around that style in the best way I can, in the most sincere and most passionate way I can. So I like sub-genres, and I consider myself a graduate of video nasties. Rape-revenge is one of the most heart-wrenching, and it’s also a low-budget kind of thing. So it’s always been at the back of my head to do a rape-revenge movie one day.
But actually, Sayara started off as a martial arts movie. I said, I’m going to do a martial arts movie, but I have to keep it simple. So, in order to keep it simple, I’ll make the revenge movie. It started as a revenge, but as soon as I said revenge, being from Turkey or maybe being exposed to all the films that I grew up with, it kind of became a rape and revenge movie. My main inspiration at some point was Ms. 45.
DC: A lot of the time, rape, revenge movies can be so exploitative and gross, but you approach yours with so much care. It’s also so difficult to watch because it’s so emotionally devastating. What was it like balancing the grindhouse sensibility, but also with the emotional impact of it?
CE: Yes, but I think it just comes naturally. It’s not something I really try for.
It was mainly in terms of style. I was aiming for something like the Pusher movies, and also another revenge film, Only God Forgives. At the beginning of this project, I was telling to my DOP that I wanted to do a low-budget Only God Forgives. And at some point I said, there is a low budget only God for, it’s called Pusher. Then I went back to watching Pusher one and three again, and I wanted Sayara to feel like a Turkish art house film that slowly becomes an Indonesian-Korean revenge film.
DC: We don’t see a lot of movies where Muslim women in hijabs are being badass, and it’s just really refreshing to see that in Sayara. Why was that important for you to have that be such a visual signifier here?
CE: Well, honestly, when I did Sayara, I wanted to do something very dangerous. As a filmmaker, [this film is] very risky, especially as a Turkish filmmaker, as a Turkish person, as a father. I’m risking my reputation. I’m risking my image, everything, by doing something so anti-mainstream. So following in the footsteps of that, when I was making the bad guys, I tried to make them as less evil as I could. And when I tried to make the “Good Guy”, I tried to make her more like a villain. I try to make everything gray, but a really dark and murky gray.
Honestly, the hijab and the Islamic thing are big problems [that have been] looming over my head since I was a little boy. Growing up in Turkey, we always had the anxiety of, “Oh my God, we’re going to turn up like Iran.” Political Islam is suffocating [Turkey] more and more and more and more and more. Obviously, I’m for all liberties and everything, but I’m kind of more hurt by what hijab represents than many other people.
So, hijab for me is a very risky subject. Mainly, I’m kind of against what it represents in a way. So, having my darling female femme fatale hero wearing a hijab was a crazy, dangerous thing for myself to do. And I wanted that danger. I had my reasons why she’s wearing a hijab, because the more her sister acts more sexually free and empowered, the more Islamist Sayara is. They have a father trauma, and both sisters are living it very differently.
But what you have in Turkey, sometimes you have a girl wearing a more revealing outfit spending time with another girl dressed much more conservatively.. They do live together, no problem, as sisters. That is very Turkish. So I wanted to reflect that, and they just kind of melt together.
DC: I love that. But yesterday, before the screening, you said that Sayara was a romantic movie to you. Can you tell me a little bit more?
CE: I think it’s romantic because there is an underlying lust in the film.
The way I think it’s romantic is because there’s this father trauma for both girls. It’s really sad for them, and both girls are experiencing it in different extremes. And the way the sister has dedicated herself to this guy in a crazy, self-destructive way is something I do see in my own life.
And the other girl, Sayara, we also have in our lives, and she’s just closed herself off. But inside, even at the very last minute, she’s weirdly thinking about kissing the guy. For instance, during the editing stage, or maybe during the shooting stage, I was revisiting this French horror film, High Tension.
DC: My favorite.
CE: I love that movie. And then I realized I’m most touched by the music in that film. When I got that music, my composer did a similar thing, inspired by that music, in the scene where Sayara’s sister is going to the guy’s house. It made everything much sadder. So then I realized, I’m trying to make Sayara sad. I’m not trying to make this violent. I’m trying to make this sad, because when you make such a movie sad, it’s even more difficult to sit through.
DC: It was very sad, but in a non-gross way, I guess. That line is so hard to walk, and I think this film does it in such an interesting way. So often in these movies, it’s a woman killing men, but you start with Sayara killing women, and I think that’s so weird, but impactful in establishing her rage as indiscriminate. It sounds weird to say I love that, but it’s true. There’s something about that that really is shocking, but in a refreshing way.
CE: It just came to me when I was thinking, “How would she [start her hunt]?” She would go to their house, but the guy wouldn’t be there. Then immediately, I’m like, “OK, she would kill this person, and then she would take the phone, find the address.” It just came from trying to figure out her path.
When I was faced with, “Is she going to kill the mom first? Oh my God, yes, she will.” And then she’s going to kill another immigrant worker, which is going to make it all the more difficult for the audience to associate with her.
This is a villain origin story. If you look at villain origin stories, it starts off with an innocent person, and then it starts off like she or he is being wronged, and then the revenge becomes so dark you stop caring about that he or she was wronged, and you accept him or her as a villain. So in a way, Sayara is like a female Keyser Söze from Usual Suspects. I found it very romantic and heartbreaking and very scary that Keyser Söze’s origin story starts with when he’s threatened, and there is no other way. He starts by killing his family first and then the bad guys. And Keyser Söze is Turkish, if you remember. He’s one of the rare Turkish characters in Western pop culture.
DC: That’s so cool. So, how did you find your Sayara?
CE: I was super lucky because I just went to a casting director who’s known for doing foreign cast, and I needed a Turkmen dad and a Turkmen mom. And when you look for a Turkmen person, you can look for a Central Asian person. They can be from Thailand, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan.
Then we found Duygu Kocabiyik, and I was like, “There’s no way she’s going to do this, man. She’s talented, but there’s no way she’s going to cut her hair.” She’s a TV drama person. And then it turns out that she was willing to do that.
DC: Oh, so she cut her own hair??
CE: Oh, yeah. By the way, if you remind me, I’ll send you a 30-minute behind-the-scenes documentary. In Turkey, when I do the private screenings after the film—Turkish audiences, they’re not used to films like this—they’re shocked. And after the film, they’re really depressed. They don’t want to talk so much. So after the film, I show this documentary with fun music, and they love it. It makes the screenings more interesting.
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