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Poster for Killing the Shadows
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Released
2006 · FILM

Killing the Shadows

In 14th-century Ottoman Turkey, a brash nomad and a sharp-tongued jester use their wit to outsmart tyrants and challenge tradition, risking their lives to bring laughter to the masses.

Directed by
Ezel Akay
Written by
Ezel Akay, Levent Kazak
Runtime
135 min
Language
TR
ComedyDramaHistory

Synopsis

Killing The Shadows is a bawdy comic fable set in the Ottoman Empire during the mid-14th century, based on two legendary figures in Turkish folklore, the jester Hacivat (played by Beyazit Ozturk) and the nomad Karagoz (played by Haluk Bilginer). The film portrays men who apparently lived and died by their sense of humour.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 18

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Mustafa PreshevaShot by Hayk KirakosyanScored by Ender Akay

Box Office

2006 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.9× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$3.0M

Budget$3.5M
Worldwide gross$3.0M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Hinrichtung der Schattende
  • Killing the Shadowsen
  • Who Killed the Shadows?es

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