Labor films in four cities across Turkey

ISTANBUL

Hürriyet Photo

Turkey’s 10th Labor Films Festival opens on May 2 with a ceremony to be held at Istanbul’s Şişli Municipality Kent Culture Center. 

The festival, organized simultaneously in Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir and Diyarbakır, will screen a total of 75 films around the theme “İşimiz Gücümüz Yaşamak” (Everything We Do Is To Live). After the screenings in four cities, the festival will travel lots of provinces.

The opening film of the festival will be a documentary “Yollara Düştük” (We Hit the Road), which tells of the struggle of filmmakers against censorship. The film titled “Kara Sevdalı Bulut” (Cloud in Love), which was not screened in Turkey for years because of censorship, is one the films to be shown in the festival this year.

Directed by Muammer Özer, “Cloud Madly in Love,” starring Zuhal Olcay and Haluk Bilginer, was shot in 1987 but has never before been screened. The festival committee invited Özer, who lives in Sweden, to Istanbul, where he will greet audiences at the opening ceremony. The film will be shown on May 3 at 7:15 p.m. at Beyoğlu Cinema and Özer will speak with viewers ahead of the screening.  

During the festival, 22 international films and 53 Turkish films will be on the screen. “Two Days, One Night,” “Capital,” “Salt of the Black Earth,” “Paliakri: Luis Tikas and Ludlow Massacre,” “Apple’s Broken Promises,” “Blood in the Mobile,” “The Empire of Shame,” and “Tears in the Fabric” are among the international feature films in the festival program. 

Five documentary films, including “Soma: Bir Avuç Kömür İçin Ömür Verenlere” (Soma: To Those Who Give Their Life for a Handful of Coal), “Vedat Türkali,” “Kobane’den Sabaha Doğru” (From Kobane, Before Dawn), “Yırca’da Zeytinlik Direnişi” (The Tree of Eternity: The Yırca Resistance) and “Motör” (Remake, Remix, Hip-Hop), are also in the festival program. 

For further information about the festival: iff.org.tr