Until recently, depictions of Turkey’s religiously conservative grassroots in either “secular” or “Islamist” films had become familiar. In “secular” films, religiously conservative Turks were portrayed as naïve and even sub-intelligent people who were either ridiculed or criticized. In “Islamist” films, by contrast, they were depicted as heroic and enlightened people who were on a mission to save the secularists from their wayward ways. Since the rise of the Justice and Development Party in 2002, these familiar – almost stereotypical – representations of religiously conservative Turks have started to change. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines have been writing about how the political and social fabrics of Turkish society have changed under the Justice and Development Party governments. However, only a handful of these works have analyzed how genres of popular culture have echoed and responded to the changing political aspirations and social attitudes of Turkey’s Islamists. This paper focuses on two recent movies, The ?mam (?smail Güne?: 2005) and Bü?ra (Alper Ça?lar: 2010) to demonstrate how the changing outlooks and lifestyles of Turkey’s Islamists are being dealt with and reflected in Turkish cinema. In the last few years, Turkish cinema has witnessed a proliferation of protagonists who are religiously conservative. The hero of The ?mam and the heroine of Bü?ra provide two such examples. By analyzing the lead characters in the movies, the paper demonstrates that the all-too-common depictions of religiously conservative Muslims have given way to new Islamic identities and alliances. The lead characters do not fit squarely the traditional boxes that would have been assigned to them as “Islamists.” Both in terms of appearances and attitudes, they manifest multiple layers of identity, some of which are quite “secular.” Moreover, in terms of plot, the movies center on the internal journeys of their main characters. The hero and heroine in The ?mam and Bü?ra are not idealized Muslims. Rather, they were reflective individuals with reservations and trepidations about their faith. While the movies were meant to attract the religiously conservative segments of society, they fared poorly in the box offices. The paper will conclude with potential suggestions for this phenomenon.