35th Istanbul Film Festival ready to kick off
- Turkey's largest film event will present 221 movies from 7-17 April; the Cineuropa Prize will be given to a title in the national competition
The 35th Istanbul Film Festival (IFF) starts tomorrow and will last for ten days, presenting 221 feature, documentary and short films across 25 categories. Headed by new festival director Kerem Ayan, after Azize Tan stepped down in August last year (read the news), the festival will feature its traditional international and national Golden Tulip competition, the national documentary competition, and the FACE Human Rights in Cinema section, while the national short-film section is becoming competitive for the first time.
Another notable novelty is the Audentia Award, introduced by Eurimages to draw attention to gender inequality in cinema (read the news). The IFF will be the first festival to give out the €30,000 prize to a female director, and 15 of them, with films in different sections, will be in the running for it. The list includes Anca Damian (The Magic Mountain [+see also:
film review
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film profile]), Aslı Özge (All of a Sudden [+see also:
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interview: Aslı Özge
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interview: Svetla Tsotsorkova
film profile]) and Athina Rachel Tsangari (Chevalier [+see also:
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film profile]) as well as four Turkish filmmakers: Senem Tüzen (Motherland [+see also:
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film profile]), Görkem Yeltan (We Were Dining and I Decided [+see also:
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film profile]), Çiğdem Sezgin (Wedding Dance) and Ahu Öztürk (Dust Cloth [+see also:
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interview: Ahu Öztürk
film profile]), among others. The full list of films can be found here.
The international Golden Tulip competition consists of 15 films, including Brady Corbet's The Childhood of a Leader [+see also:
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film profile], Felix Van Groeningen's Belgica [+see also:
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interview: Artemio Benki, Sylvie Leray
interview: Felix Van Groeningen
film profile], Tomasz Wasilewski's United States of Love [+see also:
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interview: Tomasz Wasilewski
film profile] and Christian Zübert's One Breath [+see also:
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film profile], while Zeki Demirkubuz will be Turkey's representative with Ember. The full list of films can be found here.
The national Golden Tulip competition includes 11 titles, four of which will world-premiere at the IFF: Cemil Ağacıkoğlu's The Field, Adnan Akdağ's My Own Life, Tayfur Aydın's Black Crow and Seren Yüce's Swaying Waterlily. Three movies from the Berlinale will have their Turkish premieres: Barış Kaya and Soner Caner's Rauf [+see also:
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film profile], Ümit Köreken's Blue Bicycle [+see also:
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film profile] (both Generation KPlus), and Dust Cloth (Forum). The full list of films can be found here.
The Cineuropa Prize will be presented to a film from the national competition that, besides possessing indisputable artistic qualities, also brings out the idea of dialogue and integration.
The festival will also feature another edition of the Meetings on the Bridge industry section (read the news).
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