Vibe Istanbul is a love letter to the city’s electronic underground
Dilara Özer – ISTANBUL
The search for freedom found on Istanbul’s dance floors has made its way to the big screen as “Vibe Istanbul,” a documentary that traces the city’s electronic music evolution from smoky basements to global acclaim, made its debut at the Istanbul Film Festival this week, hosted by İKSV at the iconic Beyoğlu Sineması in İstiklal Avenue.
Directed by Saeed Nasiri and Nafise Motlagh, and narrated by Turkish radio legend İzzet Öz, the film captures the raw, unfiltered energy of a scene that refused to stay underground.
Part oral history, part cultural manifesto, Vibe Istanbul follows the footsteps of pioneering DJs and producers into a movement — and Istanbul into one of its beating hearts.
The documentary pulls together names that shaped the sound: Mehmet Cavcı, Mercan Dede, Murat Uncuoğlu, Birol Giray, Mahmut Orhan, Dubfire and even international icon Boris Brejcha.
The film dives into over four decades of sonic resistance, tracing how post-1980s youth in Türkiye used music and nightlife to push back against a rigid world, creating their own space — loud, late and unapologetically free.
“This is a tribute to those who found their freedom dancing,” Nasiri said after the premiere. “As someone who’s lived here for 20 years, I see this film as a love letter to Istanbul.”
The kids want Techno
The documentary starts by exploring the city’s hunger for something new, Trailblazing venues like 14, 19 and 20 exponentially gain traction, paving the way for 2019.
Club 2019 — a cultural phenomenon in Maslak, built out of a junkyard looking straight out of a Mad Max movie — is explored in the film through never-seen-before archival footage of its iconic nights which introduced many firsts into the Istanbul scene.
It was an escape hatch from reality where social class didn’t matter. Names didn’t matter. The only thing that counted was the music — and how it made you move.
For a relatively short while, it worked. But in the early 90s, 2019 shut its doors.
Still, the spark had caught. The team behind the venue launched Radio 2019, the country’s first 24/7 techno station, keeping momentum alive until the festival circuit picked up the signal.
And when it did, it brought the world with it — Pills, Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren among many others — all drawn by a crowd that knew how to love loud music.
Unity through turbulent times
But Vibe Istanbul doesn’t stay in the glow of the strobe lights. It also confronts the breaks in the rhythm.
A recurring theme throughout the documentary is the cycle of rise, fall and revivals.
Terror attacks in Türkiye, notably the Reina shooting in 2017, cast a shadow over the nightclub scene. As the region convulsed — sanctions in Iran and civil war in Syria — Istanbul became a home for many. With migration came a cross-pollination of sound, culture and identity.
Motlagh knows that displacement intimately. She moved to Istanbul from Iran in the early days of the Islamic Revolution. For her, music was a way to find belonging and hope. “When you’re going through something difficult, the only thing that helps is having hope for the future,” She said after the film viewing.
Dancing all around the world, she had never seen the diversity of age, background and lifestyles like that of Istanbul, which inspired her to team up with Nasiri.
“The solidarity in Istanbul doesn’t exist anywhere else. You’re never alone here,” Nasiri said. “Because it started as a solidarity movement in the 80s... and that’s what we need today.”
Although prominent names still perform at bigger venues, today, Istanbul’s electronic music scene pulses through smaller, fleeting clubs — spaces that catch a vibe, then vanish or reinvent themselves somewhere new.
As Vibe Istanbul suggests, the city’s electronic music scene can turn into nostalgia in the blink of an eye. Perhaps its beauty lies precisely in that impermanence.
