After wandering through several areas of Istanbul and taking up all kinds of informal jobs since his release from prison, “Mustafa from Adana”, in his fifties, decides to start over and settle in Tarlabaşı; this is where he becomes a waste picker. It is in this cosmopolitan area, doomed to disappear, that he creates a new life.

The film revolves around Mustafa’s life in the neighbourhood, and the echoes from his past life. It visits the burial of the life he tries to forget and the new life he tries to build, against the backdrop of a neighbourhood under the threat of destruction. The future of Mustafa and his neighbourhood are joined and uncertain. All the reasons which had led him to come and live in the neighbourhood are now disappearing to make way for the expansion of the new tourist area in the heart of Istanbul. As a result of its proximity to the heart of Pera, Tarlabaşı gets absorbed in the ever greater attractiveness of tourism. For Mustafa, “Tarlabaşı is a place to hide.” Soon, there won’t be any place to hide.

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