Nicolas Hossein

Produced, written and directed by Yılmaz Güney within his own personal experiences of capital offense, he dedicates Duvar to male teenagers aged 13 to 19 living behind the bars under diabolical treatments. These teenagers get barbaric corporal punishments, injurious harrows, tortures and sexual abuses just for taking the responsibility of their destiny on a wrong turn.

Set against the backdrop of an increasingly violent strike, a worker falls in love with the middle-class daughter of his landlady.

In making this film about a director who is presently working on an autobiographical movie, real-life director Elie Chouraqui has played on a Jewish cultural theme (the "reel" director is Jewish) and the intermixing of 1960s movie-making techniques. In the film, director David is in his 30s and his autobiography brings in details about his growth to adulthood -- his early life along the seacoast in Normandy, his parents, his education, and in the present, his sister and her husband, and a few of his own lovers. Visions of the past enhance the events of the moment, such as in the scene of David's mother's death. In the end, viewers may be able to answer the question posed by the title -- "What makes David run?"