May’s offering from Side Street Films hail from Turkey and the UK. They are both celebrations of girls and women and directed by women. Mustang is a Turkish coming-of-age film directed and co-written by Deniz Gamze Ergüven, while Taking Stock is a London-set comedy-drama by indie award-winning writer/ director Maeve Murphy.

In Mustang, which is Ergüven’s debut feature, we are introduced to five free-spirited teenaged sisters, whose harmless beach escapades with some boys their age bring the wrath of their conservative family down on their heads. The girls are virtually imprisoned in their own homes, taken out of school and subjected to preparation for them to be married off. It is the powerful bond between them that causes them to rebel against tradition and shape their own futures.

Described as “the story of an emancipation”, Mustang is a powerful, female take on contemporary Turkey. Although she is based in France, director and co-writer Ergüven was born in Turkey and she says she is particularly concerned by stories set in Turkey because “the region is really fizzing, everything is changing. Recently, the country has swung toward a more conservative position but you can still feel the force and energy.”

Ergüven goes on to explain in the film’s production notes that she wanted to talk about what it’s like to be a girl and a woman in modern-day Turkey, where the condition of women is more than ever a major public issue.

“Every time I go back to Turkey, I feel a form of constriction that surprises me,” elaborates the director. “Everything that has anything to do with femininity is constantly reduced to sexuality. It’s as if everything a woman or even a young girl does is sexually loaded.” She goes on to opine that because of this obsession with sex a “conception of society emerges that reduces women to baby-making machines who are only good for housework.”

Both films are celebrations of girls and women and directed by women

And it is this attitude that the film addresses, with its strong cast of five young women and girls, all but one with no acting experience before coming on board the film. “I wanted my characters to be heroines,” says Ergüven. “And their courage had to pay off. They had to win in the end, in the most exhilarating way possible. I see the five girls as a kind of five-headed monster that loses a part of itself every time one of the girls is absent from the story, but the last-remaining piece succeeds”

Kelly Brook starring in Taking Stock.

Mustang debuted at the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, winning the Europa Cinemas Label Award. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards. It received nine nominations at the 41st César Awards and won four - for Best First Feature Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Original Music.

Loosely inspired by 1967 crime classic Bonnie and Clyde, Taking Stock introduces us to Kate (Kelly Brook) who is clearly having a bad week. Her boyfriend has split up with her, she has unpaid bills, and the shop she works in is closing down and she is made redundant. Taking the cue from her heroine Bonnie Parker, Kate hatches a plan with her workmates to rob the shop.

“With Taking Stock I wanted to make a film with a playful, fun, comedic tone that people could relate to,” says director Murphy. “I started writing the film during the recession and financial worries were on a lot of people’s minds, they still are in this austerity era, so there is a gentle topical resonance.”

Murphy describes her lead character as an unlikely bad girl, someone who is going through a very tough time in the opening of the film. “I wanted a female lead, an ordinary young woman who is struggling in life but who has a joyous indomitable spirit. I wanted the film to have a buoyant feel as Kate and her shop assistant friends come up with their own daft quick fantasy fix.”

The merging of fantasy and reality plays a big part in the film. As Kate starts to take control of her life, she finds inspiration in Bonnie Parker, one half of the infamous crime duo. In the film, black and white dreams contrast with the colourful vibrancy of the ‘real’ as Kate escapes into fantasy, although she does realise eventually that reality is very, very different.

Taking Stock won the Best Cinematography, Best Supporting Male Actor, Best Producer and The Independent Spirit Awards at the Monaco International Film Festival in December 2015

Mustang and Taking Stock form part of the Side Street Films banner by Eden Cinemas. Both films open on Wednesday and will be screened daily at alternating times during the day.