A Turkish filmmaker has confirmed to the newspaper Politiken that he has assembled a legal team with a view to acting against the Oscar-nominated short film director Elvira Lind, the Danish wife of Star Wars star Oscar Isaac.
Serhat Karaaslan claims that Lind’s film ‘The Letter Room’, which narrowly missed out on winning the Oscar for ‘Best Live Action Short’ on Sunday, is based on his own feature film from 2019 ‘Passed by Censor’.
Lind’s team denies knowledge of the film
The plagiarism allegations first appeared in IndieWire, which reported how Karaaslan became aware of the similarities through social media and comments from various film critics.
Representatives of Lind told IndieWire that no one involved in ‘The Letter Room’, who plays Isaac as a prison officer accused of reading prison letters, had seen or even been aware of the Turkish film when they heard about the potential trial .
Support from Turkish media
A story about the accusations first broke in the Turkish media on April 11 in the newspaper BirGün, which noted that the similarities were another example of a Turkish film not getting its right to have influenced another production.
The newspapers Cumhuriyet and Posta also picked up the baton, with the latter describing ‘The Letter Room’ as a ‘cheap copy’ of ‘Passed by Censor’.
Lawyer: Beyond a reasonable doubt
“We are considering our legal options with our co-producers in Turkey / 90 Film Production, Germany / Departures Film and France / Silex Films, as we were also discussing an English version of ‘Passed by Censor’,” Karaaslan and his team told IndieWire.
“We did not have any economic negotiations. Here is what our lawyer told them: Beyond a reasonable doubt, this is not just a matter of violating moral rights; it also damages the film’s financial rights. ”
Inspired by a podcast
Lind again claims that she was inspired to write the script after hearing a podcast.
She told Free to Work last year: “It told the story of different men who all unknowingly wrote love letters to the same woman. She started asking for money and help with rent, but the letters she wrote were so wonderful and all these men were very much in love with her. ”