The trepidation I felt before watching ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA, was akin to the feeling of approaching a Tarkovsky or Kubrick film for the first time. I had never seen a Turkish film, nor am I any kind of ardent fan of police procedurals. Neither of these factors discouraged me from watching Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s sixth feature; in fact, I had been waiting for the right “moment” to view it for the past few years. These factors led to a paradoxical mixture— excitement for something that seemed exotic to my cinematic tastes, yet fear that I wouldn’t follow the film, or even worse, “get” it.