AllMovie

The film takes place on an island where the Greeks and Turks live side by side in an amiable atmosphere. Most men are sailors and are seldom home. Those who stay behind are the fishermen who drink and are merry when they're not at sea. Zeynep, a dressmaker and mother of a little girl, hasn't heard from her husband for a long time. She rents rooms of her house to make ends meet, and then she eventually falls in love with one of her tenants, a loner who has a story of his own. The trouble is, she is not the only woman on the island who is interested in the handsome but aloof stranger. The first feature film by young female Turkish director Sunar Kural Aytuna, Deniz Bekliyordu is a melodrama that displays the sensitivity of the director to human foible.