Cambridge, London venues to host films from Türkiye

ISTANBUL

The fourth edition of the UK’s only independent Turkish film festival, Taste of Anatolia – Films from Türkiye (TOA), will be organized from Nov. 5 to 11. For the first time, screenings for the week-long event will extend from TOA’s home city of Cambridge to London, as well as continuing online, allowing even more people across Britain to enjoy new cinema from Türkiye.

Organized by film charity Balık Arts, this year’s TOA program lists 38 movies, 10 of which are feature-length films and 28 shorts, with five of the 38 films documentaries. The selection includes both prominent and upcoming Turkish directors tackling a myriad of themes, such as anti-war, religiosity, and a heist thriller using a blend of comic book and live-action drama.

Many of the films will make their U.K. premieres, among them the award-winning “Bembeyaz” (Pure White), the debut feature of Necip Çağan Özdemir. “Ceviz Ağacı” (Silenced Tree), written, produced and directed by Faysal Soysal and “Çatlak” (Fractured) by director Fikret Reyhan will be among these movies.

Screened at prestigious festivals such as Sundance, and the London, Berlin, and Istanbul Film Festival, one of TOA 2022’s headline movies is “Klondike,” a multiple award-winning Ukrainian-Turkish production directed by Maryna Er Gorbach. The film centers on a family in the Donetsk region of Eastern Ukraine whose world is violently disrupted by the crash of flight MH17 in 2014 and the events that follow.

After two difficult years due to the coronavirus pandemic, TOA welcomes back audiences with theater screenings in diverse venues in and around two cities. For Cambridge, TOA films will be showing at the Arts Picturehouse, Old Divinity School in St John’s College, Christ’s College, and Gardiner Memorial Hall in Burwell Village. The screening venues for London are Rio Cinema in Dalston, and Hackney’s Artlens.