HONOURABLE MENTION
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Letters
Aysel Küçüksu | 2024 | 12m | Bulgaria | Documentary
A mother and daughter uncover the letters they wrote to each other a decade ago. Can they face the truths they once shared?
Credits
Director, Producer & Writer
Aysel Küçüksu
Interview with director Aysel Küçüksu
1. What was one of the most challenging moments you faced while making Letters? Did this ‘setback’ change the direction of the final story?
One of the most challenging moments was confronting the vulnerability of revisiting words I had written long ago. At times, I felt exposed — as if I were meeting a past version of myself that I no longer fully recognised. That discomfort could have been a setback, but instead it reshaped the film. Rather than being only about memory, it became a story about growth, reconciliation, and the tender contradictions between who we were and who we’ve become.
2. What was the biggest inspiration behind Letters?
The inspiration came from a visceral memory of the letters my mother and I had exchanged years earlier. I was struck by the unusual possibility of re-reading not the letters we had received, but the ones we had written. It felt like an invitation to confront our younger selves, side by side, and to discover how our words had aged. That intimacy — the dialogue across time — was the heartbeat of the film.
3. What message do you want the audience to take away from Letters?
I hope the film reminds people of the power of vulnerability, especially within family bonds. Letters can hold love, regret, and unspoken truths all at once, and revisiting them can open doors to healing conversations across generations. I also hope the audience walks away with a reminder that people like my mother — who we don’t often see represented on screen — have rich, complex inner lives worth listening to and exploring. If the film sparks even a little more recognition and respect for voices like hers, then I’ll feel it has done its job.
Review
Written by Jack McKenzie
Flinders University Bachelor of Creative Industries (Film and Television) Student
Letters, directed by Aysel Küçüksu, is a moving and introspective documentary that delicately unravels the threads of memory, love, and identity through the rediscovery of written words. The film captures an intimate moment between mother and daughter as they uncover and revisit letters they wrote each other a decade earlier, revealing how time reshapes truth and self-understanding, deserving its win of an Honourable Mention.
The film’s premise is simple but affecting. As the two women read their past words aloud, fragments of their younger selves resurface, hopes, regrets, and unspoken feelings once sealed away in ink. What begins as a nostalgic exercise becomes a confrontation with personal history. The letters act as emotional mirrors, reflecting not only once who they were, but how their relationship has evolved through distance and change.
Küçüksu’s direction is both subtle and empathetic. She gives space for silkence, allowing pauses and glances to speak as loudly as the letters themselves. The camera lingers gently, never intruding, capturing the nuances of vulnerability. This restraint gives Letters its emotional authenticity and makes it feel less like a documentary and more like a shared memory unfolding in real time.
Visually, the film is elegant and tactile. Close-ups of aged paper, ink smudges, and trembling hands evoke the sensory intimacy of written communication, a rare reminder in a digital age of how physical words can hold emotional weight. The sound design too is delicately crafted, pairing soft ambient tones with the rhythmic texture of pen on paper.
Letters is a quiet masterpiece of emotional storytelling, a meditation on communication and the fragments of ourselves we leave behind in the words we once wrote. Küçüksu’s compassionate direction transforms a simple act of reading into a reflection on connection, forgiveness, and the enduring power of memory.