Turkish

The first feature film written and directed by Tolga Karaçelik, better known for his award-winning short films such as Rapunzel, Toll Booth tells a story of miscommunication, isolation and desperate alienation via a conflict between a father and his son. Confined to his own world of dreams, introvert, and reticent, Kenan is a toll booth attendant, who lives with his ailing father. Kenan’s drab life stuck in routines between his toll booth and home will change the day a new manager comes for supervision. (~iksv.org)Read More »

What if a revolution will happen in Turkey? “After Revolution” is discussing ordinary, daily life just after socialist revolution in Turkey. (~IMDb)Read More »

Sumru is doing music researches at a university in Istanbul. To work on her thesis on gathering and recording an exhaustive collection of Anatolian elegies she sets off for the south-east of the country for a few months. The brief trip turns out to be the longest journey of her life. During the trip, Sumru crosses paths with Ahmet, a young guy who sells bootleg DVDs on the streets of Diyarbakir, with Antranik, the ageing and solitary warden of a crumbling church in the city and with various characters who witness the ongoing ‘unnamed war’. During her three-month stay in Diyarbakir, while she was looking for the stories of the elegies, she finds herself to confront an agony from her own past. (~IMDb)Read More »

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THE EYE OF ISTANBUL tells the story of Ara Guler, the legendary Armenian-Turkish photographer, through the culmination of his retrospective exhibition in Istanbul. The documentary follows a non-linear narrative, which explores the artistic process and impulses of this great master. Ara’s curiosity, resourcefulness and fearlessness are revealed through a series of stories in the film. At 87 years old, Ara is a complex and unforgettable character; he is still sharp, irreverent, funny and philosophical. Although he is mostly recognized for his black and white photographs of Istanbul, he has enjoyed an international career, which has spanned over sixty years and has generated more than one million photographs. A student and a follower of Henri-Cartier Bresson, Ara’s mastery lies in capturing the stories and interactions among people at the right moment in history.Read More »

The movie tells the story of a teacher who spends one winter in a mountain village of Hakkari, a city in the farest South-eastern vorner of the Turkey. Erden Kıral depicts his struggle for teaching Turkish to children who can only speak Kurdish and the loneliness of Zazi in a poetic way and also using the landscape as a further character. The screenplat is based on the novel by Ferit Edgü and adapted by Onat Kutlar with contributions from Tezer Özlü, another famous Turkish writer. The film was awarded with Silver Berlin Bear at 1983.Read More »

Mist is uncertainty.
A mist which cannot be held with the hand, or even seen with the eye.
A mist which can comprehend our happiness, our pain, our fears, our contrainment and which encompasses human relationships.
A mist hanging over a family, a society and an era.
As stated by Victor Hugo “similar to the volcano’s discharge of stones, the discharge of people” in an era of uncertainty.
A mist which has taken the lives of 5 000 people within four years.
The effort of this film is to remember and understand something which is lost and gone in our country’s existence and in our own lives.
(Zülfü Livaneli)
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10 to 11 is the story of a passionate collector Mithat and the concierge of the building, Ali. For Mithat Istanbul is as vast as his collections and for Ali is nothing more than a few blocks around the building. When the neighbors decide to have the building rebuilt with the fear of earthquake and the wish for a more valuable house, Mithat’s most challenging struggle to save his collections begins. The building becomes the common destiny of these two men living alone. Their relationship that begins with the collaboration to save the continuity of the collections changes track with Mithat’s handing Istanbul over to Ali and ends when they involuntarily change each other’s fate. (IMDb)Read More »

Yaprak is just one of thousands of young women, who leave their quiet village lives behind them to seek their fortune in Istanbul. But the reality of life in a big city is harsh, and Yaprak is forced to take a job in one of the cities licensed brothels.Read More »

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A film about Kurdish students activism during ’90s in Turkey. After passing his university entrance exam, Cemal (Cahit Gok) a Kurdish boy from Tunceli (Dersim) goes to Istanbul. In time Cemal starts to involve in student activists who are mainly from Kurdish background.Read More »