Ankara Film Festival comes to screen

ANKARA

The 31st Ankara Film Festival, which was postponed due to the pandemic, will be organized at Kızılay Büyük Fener Cinema between Sept. 3 and 11.

A total of 56 films from 13 countries will be screened at the festival, where necessary pandemic measures have been taken. According to a statement made by the festival committee, festival organizers cooperated with Gazi University Medical Faculty to provide a safe environment during the pandemic.

Among the honorary awards of this year’s festival, the Aziz Nesin Labor Award will be given to Şerif Sezer, who received the first Actress Award of the festival 31 years ago, while the Art Plane Award will be given to actor, director and writer Tamer Levent, and the Mass Communication Award will be given to the independent film distribution network Başka Sinema. The awards will be presented at the opening ceremony of the festival at CER Modern on Sept. 3.

On the 100th anniversary of their birth, the 31st Ankara International Film Festival commemorates Italian director Federico Fellini and French director Éric Rohmer. Two films, which will be screened in the “In Memory” selection of the World Cinema section of the festival, will bring the unforgettable films of two master directors born in 1920 to the audience on the screen.

The first film of the selection will be Fellini’s 1953 comedy “I Vitelloni.” The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.

“Claire’s Knee,” which is the fifth film in the moral stories series of Rohmer, is based on the passion for a young woman named Claire, whom Jerome in her 30s met during a lakeside vacation before marriage preparations. The film was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and won the Golden Oyster Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

The “Visegrad Smiles” selection, which will be screened in the World Cinema section of the festival and bring together new and classic films, will bring unforgettable classics to the audience.

The selection brings together four classic comedies from five directors. Named after the Visegrad Group consisting of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, Jirí Menzel’s “Snowdrop Festival,” Frigyes Bán and Vladislav Pavlovic’s “Saint Peter’s Umbrella,” Andrzej Munk’s “Eroica” and Zoltán Fábri’s “Professor Hannibal” will meet with the audience on the screen.

This year’s films to compete at the festival’s National Feature Film Competition include Cihan Sağlam’s “Uzun Zaman Önce” (Long Time Ago), Erkan Yazıcı’s “Uzak Ülke,” (Faraway Land), Eylem Kaftan’s “Kovan” (The Hive), Faysal Soysal’s “Ceviz Ağacı,” (Silenced Tree), Leyla Yılmaz’s “Bilmemek” (Not Knowing), Maryna Er Gorbach and Mehmet Bahadır Er’s “Omar ve Biz” (Omar and Us), Mehmet Emin Yıldırım’s “Şair” (The Poet), Onur Ünlü’s “Topal Şükran’ın Maceraları” (The Adventures of Sukran the lame) and Ümit Ünal’s “Aşk, Büyü vs.” (Love, Spells and All That).

The jury, chaired by director Yeşim Ustaoğlu and made up of editor Aylin Zoi Tinel, actress Berkay Ateş, actress Tuğçe Altuğ and Hürriyet’s film writer Uğur Vardan, will distribute awards in 12 categories, and the best film will be awarded 50,000 Turkish liras.

One of the new selections of the 31st Ankara International Film Festival this year will be the finalist films of the Ninth European Union Human Rights Short Film Competition.

Following the screening that will take place on Sept. 7 at the Kızılay Büyülü Fener Cinema, there will also be a panel called “Human Rights and Documentary Cinema.” The panel will bring together the director of the EU Delegation to Turkey and film directors. The panel will open up human rights-based documentary filming practices and storytelling methods to discussion.