Powerful Music Video for Ilhan Ersahin’s Istanbul Sessions Explores Inescapable Anonymity of Screens

The music video for the incredibly catchy song “Hurri-Mitanni (Güzel Haber)” by Ilhan Ersahin’s Istanbul Sessions features a wide variety of characters who walk and dance in the streets using different disguises that efficiently block who they are and what they look like. Although these characters appear to desperately want to break out of their respective anonymity, a force beyond their means is holding each of them back.

According to director Gökalp Gönen, the need for screen time has taken their identity away.

A group of anonymous wandering the streets. Everywhere is very crowded but identities are very few. Trying to be someone is as difficult as writing your name on the waves left by this fast-moving giant ship. Everyone is everyone and everyone is nobody anymore. This silence could only exist through glowing screens, even if it found itself nooks. …They just wanted to have a little fun, to be able to live a few years without worry. In five minutes, fifteen seconds at most, they existed and left.