Documentary about Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence to premiere at Venice Film Festival

ISTANBUL

“Innocence of Memories,” a documentary film about Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s book “Museum of Innocence” and its complementary museum in Istanbul, will have its world premiere at this year’s Venice International Film Festival. 

The documentary, which was directed by Grant Gee, who is known for his film about the British alternative rock band Radiohead titled “Meeting People is Easy” on their exhaustive world tour following the success of their 1997 album “OK Computer,” will be screened as a special event at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, said the Istanbul-based museum in a written statement on July 25. 

Pamuk said he also participated in the film’s preparation process and noted he likes the works of Gee. 

“I wrote a 30-minute long original script… The new text tells the love story in the Museum of Innocence book from the eye of a secondary character. I do not tell which character it is now, but will in Venice… The documentary is both about the Museum of Innocence and Istanbul. My other books have also taken place in the documentary,” he said. 

He added he’ll be in Venice to attend the premier of the documentary. 

The Venice Film Festival will run from Sept. 2-12 this year. 

Pamuk’s 2008 novel tells the story of Kemal, the son of a wealthy Istanbul family, and his poor and distant relative Füsun, starting in 1975 and continuing up to the present. Beyond a fascinating and unforgettable love story told with an abundance of characters and incidents revealing the human soul’s depths, the reader will also enjoy details about Turkey’s social and cultural history in the past decades as well as the beauties of the author’s native city Istanbul in the background, as described in the introduction text of the novel. 

Opened in 2012 in an area close to Istanbul's historic İstiklal Street, the Museum of Innocence is based in its entirety on a work of fiction.