The 171 short and feature length films in the festival reached to 130 thousand cinephiles in two weeks in a total of 455 sessions,across 8 movie halls. In more than 100 sessions, either the directors, actors, and/or producers of the film were present in the screening.
In the aftermath of the ordained cancellation of Bakur’s screening due to the lack of a registration certificate, 33 of the films in the National Golden Tulip, National Documentary, International Golden Tulip, and FACE Human Rights Competitions and Out of Competition and New Turkish Cinema Sections cancelled their screenings at the festival. At the press meeting held on Monday, 13 April, the jury members supported this decision, and thus the Competitions and Closing Ceremony of the festival were also cancelled. At the meeting, a call for solidarity was made to the whole sector, festivals, and professional organisations to change the Regulation Pertaining to the Basis and Procedures of Evaluation and Categorisation of Film Products, which requires the films produced in Turkey to have registration certificates in order to be screened at festivals, to extend the exemption implemented for foreign films to locally produced films, as well. We believe that raking up the problems that have been uttered by film professionals for all these years has been a most favourable outcome of this year’s festival and a gain for the Turkish cinema.
Throughout the festival, 6 cinema lectures and panels, 1 concert, and 3 parties were held with the participation of the festival guests, besides the nearly 450 meetings that brought a hundred international cinema professionals together with the directors and producers of the films chosen for the Meetings on the Bridge in its 10th edition.
The Istanbul Film Festival lent colour also to the Asian side of the city with film screenings and events this year. Festival films met with cinephiles in the two halls of the Rexx Movie Theatre, while a free street party, organised in collaboration with the Fil’m Hafızası, enlivened the life in Kadıköy on the first weekend of the festival.
Festival Supporters
The 34th Istanbul Film Festival was held with the support of the Festival Sponsor Akbank, along with the contributions of the Theme Sponsors Anadolu Efes, NTV, Sabah Newspaper, Pupa Bilişim, Nescafé Gold, tv2, and Mubi. Besides the great support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Beyoğlu Municipality continued their publicity support in the festival. In 2015, the guests of the Istanbul Film Festival were transferred by Renault. The leading sponsor of all festivals of İKSV is the Eczacıbaşı Holding, the Official Communications Sponsor is Vodafone Turkey, the Official Carrier is DHL, The Official Accommodation Sponsor is Martı Istanbul Hotel and the service sponsors are Zurich Sigorta, GFK, Memorial Health Group, PDR Group, directComn Marketing Group and AGC.
Metin Erksan’s Masterwork, Revenge of the Snakes, on the Silver Screen after 53 Years
The Istanbul Film Festival’s “Turkish Classics Revisited” project, running with the collaboration of Groupama for eight years now, had Metin Erksan’s Revenge of the Snakes (1962) with Fikret Hakan, Nurhan Nur, Aliye Rona, Kadir Savun, Şadiye Arcıman, and Erol Taş in the lead roles, renovated and reintroduced to the modern viewers. The film was renovated by the Fanatik Film and its screening in the TIM Show Center was attended by one of the leading artists Nurhan Nur, composer of the film’s original music Yalçın Tura, and Işık Baykurt, daughter of Fakir Baykurt, writer of the original novel.
Festival’s Honorary Awards
This year’s Cinema Honorary Awards were presented to director-producer Yılmaz Atadeniz, musician Cahit Berkay, actress Nebahat Çehre, screenwriter-director Safa Önal, and actor Süleyman Turan at the opening ceremony on 3 April.
As a tribute, the festival featured Yılmaz Güney’s Seyyit Han (1968) with Nebahat Çehre in the lead alongside the director himself, Yılmaz Atadeniz’s The Masked Five (1968) with Tamer Yiğit, Selma Güneri, Erol Taş, and Süleyman Tıran in the leads, and Temel Gürsu’s Dikkar Kan Aranıyor (1970) with Süleyman Turan and Ekrem Bora in the leads. Nebahat Çehre, Yılmaz Atadeniz, Süleyman Turan, and Temel Gürsu met with the audiences after the screening of their films.
Panels and Special Screenings Pay Tribute to the Turkish Cinematheque and Onat Kutlar
It has been 50 years that Onat Kutlar, who also was among the founders of the festival, founded the Turkish Cinematheque Association together with his friends. As a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Turkish Cinematheque and to Onat Kutlar in the 20th anniversary of his death, the Istanbul Film Festival held a special panel at the Istanbul Modern. The attendees had the chance to hear about the legendary Cinematheque from the insiders, about Onat Kutlar from his close friends, and about a highly rattling period in the history of Turkish cinema from the witnesses themselves. The panel was moderated by the ex-director of the Istanbul Film Festival, Hülya Uçansu, who had run the post for 25 years. Cinema writer Atilla Dorsay, who is among the festival’s founders and currently an honorary member of the advisory board, journalist-author Zeynep Oral, author-critic Vecdi Sayar, who was the artistic director of the festival for 13 years, and Jak Şalom, who was among the founders of the Cinematheque and its first member, were the speakers at the panel.
Following the panel, Il Gattopardo / The Leopard (1963) by Luchino Visconti, one of Onat Kutlar’s favourite directors, was given a special screening. Onat Kutlar’s article on Visconti, originally published in the Cinematheque’s Yeni Sinema Magazine in 1967, was also featured in the festival catalogue and website.
Special Sections In This Year’s Festival
This year’s festival featured sections special to the 2015 edition, along with the established sections of Akbank Galas, From the World of Festivals, Masters, New Visions, Documentary Time with NTV, Mined Zone, Midnight Madness, and Kid’s Menu. This year, the Istanbul Film Festival dedicated a special section to the cinema of the Balkans.
The “Balkans: Cinema of Flames”, brought 7 of the best and the most contemporary films from this very special region. The ties that constitute a family - the most sanctified and the most criticized social institution of all - were questioned in the Family Ties section.
The short films produced by the Istanbul Modern in its 10th anniversary as a tribute to the centenary of the Turkish cinema, all of which contribute to the country’s cinematic history from a contemporary point-of-view, received a block screening in the festival, under the title, “Little Truths”.
Held with the collaboration of the Goethe-Institut and curated by Annegret Richter, Programmer of Animated Films at the DOK Leipzig, the New German Animation section comprised two block screenings.
A leading figure in the New Argentine Cinema, screenwriter-director Lisandro Alonso’s entire filmography was screened for the first time in Turkey, within the scope of the festival.
Festival’s Guests
Out of the 455 screenings in the festival, 115 were held with the participation of the film’s director, actors, screenwriter and/or producers, who presented their film before the screening and answered the questions from the audience afterwards.
This year, many directors, producers and actors including Rolf De Heer, Lone Scherfig, Christian Petzold, Raoul Peck, Elmer Bäck were in Istanbul to present their films at the 34th Istanbul Film Festival. Also, directors of the films that the festival screenings were cancelled met the audience at the screening times of their films. Cafer Panahi sent a solidarity message to be read at the screening of his film Taxi. Shawkat Amin Korki, Hisham Zaman and Mehmet Aktaş from Memories on Stones and Letter to the King met the audience at the festival even though they cancelled the screening of their films to support the films produced in Turkey. Also Veit Helmer, Amal Ramsis, Guy Myhill, Ayat Najafi, Chiara d’Anna, Jan-Willem van Ewijk, Najwa Najjar, Anne Benjamin ve Guillaume Clere, Suha Arraf, Kris Thykier, Konstantina Stavrianou, Reza Mirkarimi, Nima Javidi, Jamshid Mahmoudi, Syllas Tzoumerkas, Angeliki Papoulia, Wasim Zakir, Tom Hardiman, Brice Cauvin, Fatemeh Motamed Arya, Samuel Theis, Angélique Litzenburger, Paul Poet, Kevin Eastwood, Jens Östberg, Fatmir Koçi, Margarita Manda, Michael Sturminger, Matthew Myers, Bahman Ghobadi, Fabrizio Ferracane, Klaus Maeck, Gerard Johnson, Vikram Mohinta, Duccio Chiarini, Laurent Bécue-Rénard, Rüdiger Suchsland, Luigi Lo Cascio, Dana Ivgy, Nelly Tagar, Gust Van den Berghe, Ernesto Daranas Serrano and Amir Fekri and jury members Bence Fliegauf, Cedomir Kolar, George Ovashvili, Paul Poet, Syllas Tzoumerkas, Wieland Speck were among the guests of the 34th Istanbul Film Festival.
Representatives of international film festivals such as Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Thessaloniki, Moscow, Hamburg, Batumi, Gothenburg, Sarajevo, Busan, Sofia, Amiens, Tbilisi, Locarno, Fantasia, Yerevan, Vilnius, Odessa, Karlovy Vary, Forum des Images were among over 350 guests of the festival.
Meetings on the Bridge
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the Meetings on the Bridge has contributed to the completion of
29 film projects, and raised close to 430.000 Euros for 36 different projects since its inception in 2006.
8 feature-length and 2 documentary film projects, along with 1 feature and 1 documentary in their post-production stage were presented in the Meetings on the Bridge. Following the presentations in the Film Project Development Workshop, the international jury comprising Gabrielle Dumon (Le Bureau Films), Giovanni Robbiano (Mediterranean Film Institute - MFI), Khalil Benkirane (Doha Film Institute), Meinholf Zurhorst (ZDF), and Sergio Garcia De Leaniz (Eurimages) chose the award winning projects.
The winners of the 8th Film Project Development Workshop are as follows.
- For his project Dead Horse Nebula, director Tarık Aktaş received the Meetings on the Bridge Support Award of 10,000 USD
- Zekeriya Aydoğan’s project, Death of a Father and Son received the French National Centre for Cinema (CNC) Award of 10,000 Euros.
- Mahmut Fazıl Coşkun’s project Announcement received the Melodika Sound Post Production Award that covers all the sound production of the film.
- Sinem Sakaoğlu’s project, The Crooked House received the Mediterranean Film Institute (MFI) Scenario Award, which comprises four stages.
The projects to be supported by the Turkish-German Co-Production Development Fund are as follows.
- Mehmet Can Mertoğlu - Album – 30,000 Euros (Production Support)
- Hüseyin Karabey - Hamarat Apartment - 20,000 Euros
- Nefin Dinç - The Memoirs of Antoine Köpe - 20,000 Euros
- Melisa Önel - 16 - 10,000 Euros
- Çayan Demirel - Songs of Fraternity - 10,000 Euros
- Erol Mintaş - Crows - 15,000 Euros
- - Idle Moments - 10,000 Euros
Following these incidents, 3 of the films that were selected for the Work in Progress Workshop decided to cancel the presentation of their films and therefore, the Work in Progress Award within the scope of the Meetings on the Bridge was also cancelled.
The Istanbul Film Festival will return in the April of 2016.
