Yol was filmed clandestinely by Serif Gören from a Güney script that was smuggled from prison; the footage was then smuggled again to the director’s exile for editing. Five inmates of a Turkish prison are granted a week-long furlough to visit their respective homes, where they variously encounter violence, military repression, feudal custom, and mistreatment of women that seem hardly better than the oppression of prison life. One is required by tradition to murder his wife after he learns that she has been unfaithful; another is kept from his fiancée by patriarchal custom; a third, a prisoner of Kurdish descent, finds his village devastated by the Turkish army. All five characters effectively communicate Güney’s frustration with the injustices of a homeland to which he himself could not return. The result brought the director to the international spotlight following its overwhelming success at Cannes.