International films to hit Istanbul screens tonight

ISTANBUL-Hürriyet Daily News

The Istanbul Film Festival will continue for 16 days until April 15, featuring more than 200 films in 23 categories. It will also feature discussions and workshops with the participation of filmmakers.

Turkey’s most comprehensive film event, the 31st Istanbul Film Festival, will open tonight at a gala ceremony at the Lütfi Kırdar Congress and Exhibition Hall. The opening film of the event will be British director Terence Davies’ latest film “Deep Blue Sea,” starring Rachel Weisz.

The festival’s Cinema Honorary Awards will be presented to five significant figures in film during the opening ceremony.

The awards will be presented to director Ali Özgentürk, actress Ayşen Gruda, actor Halit Akçatepe and Sevin Okyay, the first female movie critic in Turkey.

Davies, whose latest movie is highly anticipated after his acclaimed 2008 “Liverpool of Time and the City,” will also be in Istanbul to receive a Cinema Honorary Award during the opening ceremony.

He will give a master class within the festival. The class, titled “The Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity,” will be on March 31 at Salon.

The festival will continue for 16 days until April 15, featuring more than 200 films in 23 categories. In addition to the film screenings, the festival will also feature discussions and workshops with the participation of filmmakers, cinema courses, master classes and concerts.

The films will be screened in seven movie theaters: Atlas, Fitaş 1 and 4, Beyoğlu, the Pera Museum, Nişantaşı City Life and Kadıköy Rexx. One of the most popular sections of the festival, “Midnight Madness” will continue this year. During the festival, a film will be screened at 12 a.m. every Saturday.

Golden Tulip, grand award of the festival

In the “International Competition” category of the 31st Istanbul Film Festival, 11 films that have received attention from film circles, dealing with themes of art and artists or literature adaptations, will compete for the event’s grand prize, the Golden Tulip. The award, presented in memory of Şakir Eczacıbaşı, includes a 25,000 euro prize. The director of the winning film will receive 10,000 euros, the company which will distribute the film in Turkey will receive 10,000 euros and the remaining 5,000 euros will be given to the film that receives the Special Jury Award.

The “International Competition” films will be presented to the audience and an international jury for the Golden Tulip Award during the second week of the festival. The competition jury will be headed by Turkey’s internationally acclaimed director Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

The films in the competition will be “The Loneliest Plane,””Death of a Superhero,” “Bonzai,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Amir Naderi,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “Cracks in the Shell,” “The Delay,” “Albert Nobbs,” “A Royal Affair,” and “Oslo.”

In the festival’s “National Competition” category, films produced in the 2011-2012 season will compete. There will be approximately 40 movies in this category, as well as an “Out-of-Competition” category.
The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) will distribute its own awards at the Istanbul Film Festival as in previous years. One movie from the “International Competition” and one from the “National Competition” will receive the FIPRESCI Award.

Special sections

One of the special categories at this year’s festival, “Filming Revolution,” focuses on the Arab Spring. It will examine stories of public movements and rebellions all around the world using cinema and investigate “how revolutions are filmed.”

This category includes contemporary revolution movies from Tunisia and Egypt as well as movies telling stories from Morocco, Yemen, and Ukraine in cooperation with academic and film maker Alisa Lebow of docIstanbul. The category will bring a new perspective to the events in recent months by combining previous movies with contemporary revolution films. There will be eight feature films and one short film in the category.

The festival also has a special section for Greek cinema, which is a hybrid in terms of style and genre, comprising solid and realist stories investigating family and human relations without regard to political issues and addressing social realities with innovative narrative techniques. Five examples of striking Greek cinema will be shown to audiences in the category “What’s Happening in Greece?”
Tickets for the festival are on sale at the box offices of Atlas, Beyoğlu, and Nişantaşı Citylife (City’s), Rexx in Kadıköy and through Biletix sales channels.