Ayla (2017) Review: A Soldier's Unplanned Fatherhood

Is Ayla worth watching?

Yes. Ayla is a big-hearted Korean War drama whose true story is strong enough to survive the film’s heavy hand, and the bond at its centre is one of the most moving in recent Turkish popular cinema. Can Ulkay lets the relationship between a young soldier and an orphaned child grow slowly, and the performances make it feel lived-in rather than engineered. The reservation is tonal: this is a film that wants your tears and pushes for them with music and lingering close-ups, and viewers who resist that kind of steering will notice every nudge.

What is Ayla about?

Ayla begins in the early 1950s, when Turkey sent troops to fight under the United Nations flag in Korea. Süleyman (İsmail Hacıoğlu), a young Turkish soldier, comes across a small girl alone in the devastation of the war, her family nowhere to be found. He cannot leave her behind, gives her a Turkish name, Ayla, and takes her into his care, although neither of them speaks the other’s language.

The film then follows that bond across decades and continents, with Çetin Tekindor playing Süleyman in later life and Kim Seol as the young Ayla. It is inspired by a real soldier and a real child, and it wears that origin openly.

Ulkay directs a Turkish production that runs 125 minutes, largely in Turkish, with much of its drama playing out across the gap between two languages. It was a major hit at home, and Turkey chose it as its submission for the Academy Awards’ foreign-language film category.

A war film that keeps its eyes on a child

Ulkay is not especially interested in combat, and that is to the film’s advantage. The battle scenes are handled competently and kept brief; the real subject is life behind the lines, where a child’s presence changes the soldiers around her. Small routines carry the story: meals shared across a language barrier, improvised games, the slow business of a frightened girl learning to trust a stranger in uniform.

That focus gives the film a different texture from most war dramas. The danger is real and never far away, but the tension comes from the question hanging over every tender scene, which is how long a soldier on a foreign campaign can keep a child who is not officially his. The film lets that anxiety sit underneath the warmth rather than spelling it out.

Hacıoğlu and Kim Seol carry the heart

İsmail Hacıoğlu plays Süleyman as a decent, slightly awkward young man rather than a hero, and his gentleness with Ayla is convincing because it looks unpractised. He is especially good in the quiet moments where Süleyman realises how much responsibility he has taken on without meaning to.

Kim Seol is the film’s secret weapon. Child performances in sentimental dramas often tip into precociousness, but hers stays natural: watchful, stubborn, occasionally funny, and very believable as a girl who has already lost more than she can put into words. The rapport between the two leads is what makes the film’s emotional climaxes land, even when the staging around them overreaches.

Çetin Tekindor brings gravity to the later timeline. His scenes are fewer, but he gives the story a sense of a whole life lived with one unresolved attachment, and that lends the framing real weight.

Where the sentiment overflows

The film’s instinct is always to underline. The score swells at moments that would move an audience on their own, and several scenes are held long after their point is made. At 125 minutes, some of the camp material feels repetitive, and the secondary soldiers are sketched rather than developed.

The Korean side of the story is also thinner than it could be. Apart from Ayla, the Korean characters mostly exist at the edges of a narrative told from the Turkish point of view. For a film about two cultures meeting, that is a missed opportunity, even if the central relationship remains genuinely affecting.

Who should watch Ayla?

This is for viewers who respond to true-story dramas and do not mind a film that aims squarely for the heart. It suits a family evening with older children, though the war scenes include violence and death, and the themes of separation and loss can be distressing. Set aside a little over two hours, and keep tissues nearby.

If it works for you, try these next:

• Miracle in Cell No. 7, another Turkish tearjerker built on the bond between a devoted father and his young daughter.
• Nefes: Vatan Sağolsun, a much harsher Turkish war film that shows soldiering without the comfort.

The verdict

Ayla is sentimental by design, and it occasionally overplays its hand, but the relationship between Süleyman and the girl he rescues is so well performed that the film earns most of the emotion it asks for. It is a moving, accessible war drama with a real story behind it and a generous heart in front.

Rating: 4.5/5