Discoveries from Turkey World Cinema

Doru and his friends play games to determine who’s the king of the jungles.

Yildiz, who lives in a small Black Sea village, tries to learn to read and write with the help of the word cards her brother Fikri secretly brings from school because her family does not send her to school. As the two siblings struggle against the realities of the geography they live in, April 23 Children's Day is approaching.

Tevfik Esenç is the last man on earth to speak Ubykh. Years later, his granddaughter and the film’s co-director, Burcu Esenç, travelled to Sorbonne University and the College de France in Paris, to Oslo University and the Caucasus to unearth this lost language.

The parallel story of a looter carrying a letter from Central Asia to Anatolia in the 13th century and a traveler researching Seljuk artifacts in Anatolia today.

Hidayet Usta is a shoemaker in his early 80s who has made a living repairing shoes. Having separated from his wife years ago and with a strained relationship with his children, Hidayet lives alone, but contentedly in his own world.

A short film by İlker Canikligil.

Aslan, a young insecure fisherman who lives on a Turkish island, finds a valuable lobster cave while diving. Knowing this treasure will bring him wealth and the prestige that he has never had in his society, he decides to keep it a secret from his cousin and best friend Yilmaz until he can properly harvest the lobsters by himself. By not sharing the secret, Yilmaz's growing suspicion conjures a series of paranoid obsessions that thrust him into a downward spiral.

The story puts İlhan Çomak at the center, even though he is not physically present in the film. It focuses on the 21 years that İlhan spent in prison and his family’s experience of those years without him. The narrative is constructed through the letters İlhan wrote and aims to describe his life, his emotions and longings. The film constructs İlhan’s history through a chronology in the prison but refrains from restricting it only to a “prisoner’s quest for justice”, and rather tells a story of the situations he finds himself in over the years and his emotions and their equivalents in life.

Becoming an adult begins with moving out from your parents' house. While leaving the house, Derin hides an adult secret in the toy-box filled with her childhood memories. We step into adulthood sometimes voluntarily, or sometimes involuntarily and it gradually expands with inevitable confrontations.

A collection of stories from five women across different regions, generations, and beliefs in Türkiye. A four-generation family harvesting nuts in the Black Sea region; Aslı running a historic coffee business in Istanbul; Hira giving birth in the Aegean Sea; Hatice, an Alevi/Kurdish woman on the eastern high plains; and Arya fighting for transgender rights in Ankara. Stories of freedom, desire, and dreams shaped by the landscapes they inhabit.

A group of friends try to help their friends, but end up getting themselves into a mess. In an attempt to save their friends who have been subjected to a spell, the young group burns the spells and jinn writings they downloaded from the internet, thereby becoming the target of the Daktylos jinn, a highly dangerous tribe. No one has ever escaped the wrath of Damanaus, the most ruthless of the Daktylos jinn living on Mount Ida, and Damanaus's new target is none other than the young group of friends.

Zeliha, mother of two children, is a poor laborer who works in a steel soucepan factory. One day, she is fired as an unexpected moment. While she is attempting to find new job, she also searchs for solution in order to prevent children noticing this situation. A solution created by her, shows deadlock condition as a result of poverty.

Tenere tells the true story of African people who set out from Agadez, Niger, crossing the desert to reach Libya and Europe. In the film, we witness the arduous journey of Bachir from Agadez and his companions in a truck resembling Noah's ark. We see how they struggle both physically and emotionally with harsh natural conditions, thirst and many other problems.

The events that begin with the reversal of roles between the women and men living in the town mark the start of a comedy. Now the women are the heads of the household, while the men are the nest-builders. Even women are going off to join the army. Even the mafia is now female. The situation of the men is worthy of newspaper headlines. Funny and comical situations will arise in the town centered around the relationship between women and men.

The life of legendary writer Yaşar Kemal is depicted through his words and those of close friends. Using unpublished footage, audio, and documents, the film portrays his epic journey, literature, and worldview.

A Turkish-Jewish family faces a series of dilemmas on the morning of Susam’s Bar-mitzvah ceremony with the limitations of Shabbat day rules when Susam locks himself in his room and does not get out for his ceremony.

After graduating from medical school, a young doctor returns to his hometown and is forced to treat a fugitive.

Katman is the story of the archaeological dig that has been conducted at the Gre Amer dig in the village of Işıkveren in Batman since 2009 by Dr. Gül Pulhan and Dr. Stuart Blaylock. The activities are conducted by the Katman Culture and Tourism Directorate's Museum Directorate within the framework of the Ilısu Dam HES project. Katman sheds light on the customs that have until recently continued to be part of daily life in the region, but which in fact go back centuries in time.

The documentary features conversations with women from different age groups about their experiences with marriage and pregnancy. Shot in Batman and Bitlis, the documentary reveals both the similarities and differences in the stories of women living in these two cities. It opens a space for discussion on how marriage, sexuality, and pregnancy are experienced by women in two families, and how these experiences shape different aspects of their lives.

Action packed Turkish ninja turkey.

Writer/director Fatma Belkıs reclaims the filmic artifacts of Turkish discrimination against Kurds in the singular micro short, Keje. Belkis picks up cuttingroom-floor remains from the 1968 film, Seyyit Han, a film that managed distribution approval by the Turkish Committee on Film Censorship only after producer, Abdurrahman Keskiner, excised every single utterance of the leading female character’s name, “Keje”—because it was a Kurdish name. This rejection of a Kurdish name was only one tyrannical enforcement of an official state policy exacting a comprehensive denial of Kurds as an ethnic population. Here then, with redemptive operatic ease, Belkis resurrects and coalesces every single utterance of the name in a kind of inevitable rapid-fire response and features the “Keje” quickfire between Seyyit Han’s original opening sequence and the film’s final “The End”. Keje is not just genre-defiant but utterly defiant. And restorative.

The fate of Turan Village, which a charming village located in an area of great natural beauty surrounded by mountains, canyons and rivers far away from the city, will change with the departure of unknown helicopters.

Four friends become unlikely bystanders to an incident of domestic violence. What will they do?

Ali Kemal and Niko were childhood friends during the years when Anatolia was under occupation. One day, Niko comes to Ali Kemal with the news of the National Anthem. He tries to persuade Ali Kemal to participate in the competition. But Ali Kemal's plan is different.

Bekir makes a living by selling sacrificial sheep in his makeshift hut stuck among the plazas in Istanbul. One of the sheep that he has sold disappears. He has only two days to find the sheep or return the money.

The adventures of two friends who left their hometowns to become artists in Istanbul.

A group of carefree young people decide to rent a place to have fun. Finding a cheap cottage, they immediately rent it, thinking it's a great opportunity. However, the cottage is not what they imagined. After settling into their rooms, the young people gather together and start chatting. When one of them begins telling scary stories about the house being haunted, a deep silence falls over the group. Everyone is tense, but once they realize that the stories are just jokes, they continue their fun. This time, they decide to take the horror stories up a notch and try to summon spirits. However, things won’t go as smoothly as they had imagined.

Osman is a young man who works as a courier and studies at university. While riding his motorcycle, Necdet hits him with his car. Osman does not complain about Necdet. Necdet, impressed by Osman's honesty and loyalty, offers him a job. However, Necdet is a man with a dark past. The opening of past records leads to the start of unwanted events. Rahmi, the fiancé of Necdet's daughter Sedef, his father Talat, and the mafia leader Atıf also become involved in the events. Osman and Necdet will be drawn into various traps they did not anticipate.

The film tells the story of two lovers who portray each other as wealthy individuals. Nevin works as a secretary to support her siblings. However, she is unable to hold down a job for long. She frequently encounters difficulties with philanderers. Eventually, she begins working for Ahmet Bey, a journalist and writer. She has also seen Murat in Ahmet Bey's apartment building. The two young people are attracted to each other. However, both of them have made a mistake about the other. Nevin and Murat resort to a small lie because they think each other is wealthy. Nevin introduces herself as Ahmet Bey's daughter, and Murat as jeweler Osman Altınzade. This lie, which began as an innocent game, gradually turns into an unsolvable mystery.

A stubborn, grumpy, difficult, harsh grandfather who produces the world's best honey with his hard-working bees and huge dog, and a stubborn, angry, sulky grandmother who makes the world's best butter with her cute goats and kids, and a little girl who believes in love, angels, and goodness, but cannot find a warm home to call her own. The little girl, who stands firm against the harsh winds blowing between the grandfather and grandmother, and her friend Ömer—as small as she is but renowned on the plateau for his intelligence, strength, and diligence—will take the audience on a journey to a brand-new fairy tale and adventure, transporting them back to their long-lost childhood years.

Based on Xavier de Montépin's story, the film tells the story of a widow wrongly accused of arson.

After the death of her hoarder mother, Öykü returns to the house she hasn’t set foot in for years and, amidst the hundreds of items she tries to get rid of, discovers her mother’s loneliness.