Ayla: The Daughter of War

I had very high expectations for this South Korean-Turkish war drama based on the description, my husband’s recommendation and the ratings across different platforms — but the film turned out to be incredibly disappointing.

Ayla is emotionally dry. Even though it’s based on real events and should be touching, it fails completely. It felt like the people who made it don’t understand how drama and tension work — how to actually make someone cry at an emotional peak. But that’s not the only problem.

The writing itself is really poor, and a lot of scenes are just plain cringe — full of unnecessary and cheap pathos that comes across as fake.

On top of that, the main character’s actions are illogical. What he does doesn’t evoke sympathy or pity — it just irritates you, because frankly, it’s dumb. He does absolutely nothing to fix the mistakes of his past. Others do it for him, and we’re supposed to accept this as “he finally fulfilled his promise”. And overall, he’s not a very likable character — especially by the end of the film. But the creators are trying to sell this to us as something cute and touching.

And the words from that quote feel like a huge mockery after learning the statistics on single mothers and finishing this movie — because neither do fathers fight for their kids in real life, nor did this character fulfill the promises he made to his ‘daughter’. What an irony.