Filmekimi festival set to tour Turkey with dozens of movies

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Almost 40 movies, many of which premiered or won awards at international events will be screened during the festival, which will start in Istanbul at the end of September before touring western and eastern Turkish provinces.

Filmekimi, an October fixture on Istanbul’s cinema calendar, has announced its main eight movies. The festival will start on Sept. 28 and continue to Oct. 6, before spreading to other Turkish cities such as Bursa, İzmir, Trabzon, Ankara, Gaziantep, Batman and Diyarbakır.

Almost 40 movies, many of which premiered or won awards at international events like the Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Toronto film festivals, will be screened. The event, now in its 12th year, is being organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV). In earlier years the festival reached 47,000 people, and the aim this year is to reach even more people in other cities. Tickets will available on Sept. 21.

Highlights of this year’s program

A number of movies particularly come to the fore at this year’s event. Among these, “Blue is the Warmest Color” by director Abdellatif Kechiche, which won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was lauded by both critics and viewers. Presided over by Steven Spielberg, the jury decided to award the Palm d’Or to director Kechiche as well as his lead actresses, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux, an uncommon practice. Creating instant controversy in terms of art and pornography with its unflinching approach to sexuality and realism, “Blue is the Warmest Color” investigates love and life through the relationship of two young girls, one a high school student and the other a blue haired artist.

Another prominent movie at this year’s festival is “The Past,” which was premiered at Cannes in May. The film follows Ahmad, who has returned from Tehran to Paris following a four-year separation, to finalize the divorce procedure from his French wife Marie.

“The Congress,” which is the opening film of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight sidebar, is freely adapted from Stanislaw Lem’s cult novel by Ari Folman, the director of the animation masterpiece “Waltz with Bashir.”

In this part-realist film part-fantasy cartoon, Robin Wright plays herself, as she gets an offer from a major studio to sell her cinematic identity: she’ll be digitally scanned and sampled so that her image can be used with no restrictions in all kinds of Hollywood films. The film follows Robin as she makes her comeback after the contract expires, straight into the world of future fantasy cinema.

“Gloria,” a Spanish feature, is produced by Pablo Larrain and directed by Sebastián Lelio, who was a member of the Golden Tulip jury of the Istanbul Film Festival in April. The film was a unanimous favorite among both critics and audiences at the Berlinale earlier this year.

“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” a U.S.-made film, is a story of love, motherhood, and the search for peace. It is a lyrical portrait of people tied together by love, tragic circumstances, and obligations in director David Lowery’s emotional Western, which premiered first at the Sundance Film Festival and then internationally at the Critics’ Week section at Cannes.

“Only Lovers Left Alive,” is considered a masterpiece from director Jim Jarmusch, which he described as “crypto-vampire love story.”

“La Danze De La Realidad” (The Dance of Reality), on the other hand, is an study of the deep history of the life of Alejandro Jodorowsky, who, in the 1970s, was a superstar of the underground scene and the international artistic counter-culture with his cult films “Fando and Lis” and “El Topo.”