As eastern anatolian village tradition requires, 27 year-old Medine must serve oven-roasted lamb at her five year-old son Mert’s circumcision feast. Poor but determined, Medine puts the family to work cutting branches to earn something towards the price of the sheep they need. Ismail, Medine’s unemployed husband, is worried by his wife’s assertive behaviour. Envious of the attention Mert gets, his elder sister Vicdan makes Mert believe that if a sheep is not found he will be slaughtered instead.? ?A singer-prostitute arrives in town. The village leader finds ?smail a job in the slaughterhouse. Friends there lead ?smail astray, and this weakness makes it even harder to buy the sheep. Medine persists. Mert has his own motivation to search for an animal, with determination that rivals his mother’s. Refusing even her grandmother’s support Medine receives help and solidarity from an unlikely source.

When common values defended by a community cannot be realised for one or another reason, what happens to individuals who are the building blocks of the community?
The story of THE LAMB is about Medine who is left alone by her own community and let down by her husband, just when she needs their support most. Circumstances force her to teach that community a lesson. Her actions also silence her husband and make him reconsider his role in the family.
From working the fields to taking care of husband, children and other relatives, virtually all the duties of family are imposed on women in contemporary Anatolian country life. Yet the weight of these responsibilities is still not acknowledged.
My aim is to talk about the confrontation between modernising forces and traditional ones.