Refreshing, surprising and attractive - Turkish films at the 31st FilmFestival Cottbus

Until Sunday, the 31st FilmFestival Cottbus will offer an extensive look at current Turkish cinema and present a total of 15 exciting, visually powerful and completely different feature and short films between political pressure and artistic emancipation for the first time.

Despite everything, current Turkish cinema remains discursive and artistically surprising. With psychological sensitivity and unforeseen twists current developments, historical references and personal fractures are discussed - thoughtful, visually powerful, spot-on, crossing the boundaries between mainstream, genre film and arthouse cinema. Until Sunday, the 31st FilmFestival Cottbus will be screening seven of these 15 films - curated primarily in the Close Up TR section - in its programme, including the U18 competition entry GERANIUM | SARDUNYA by Çağil Bocut (Turkey, Germany 2021), Nesimi Yetik's IT'S ALL ABOUT PEACE AND HARMONY | DIRLIK DÜZENLIK (Turkey 2019) or LOVE, SPELLS AND ALL THAT | AŞK, BÜYÜ VS. by the renowned director Ümit Ünal. And even after the festival, you still have the chance to stream some of these films until 16 November.

Even today, directors who succeed with their arthouse films at renowned A-list festivals work centrally in commercial productions or in the TV series industry. While so-called mainstream cinema produces plenty of burlesque comedies and historical epics, it also revolves around themes such as gentrification, corruption and gender issues. "Turkish cinema is characterised by an impressive diversity of genres. Here the heirs of the auteur generation, there the audience-oriented school: contemporary Turkish filmmakers stage serious topics with a light hand, negotiate moral concepts in genre format, vary somnambulistic folkloric motifs, reflect family upheavals with wry freshness and social cuts with quiet anger," explains FFC programme director Bernd Buder.

One of the most prominent representatives of the Turkish film industry paying a visit to Cottbus these days is likely to be actor Umut Karadağ. Born in Ankara in 1971, Karadağ has appeared in more than 25 TV and streaming series and most recently starred in Semih Kaplanoğlu's film COMMITMENT HASAN, which had its world premiere this year at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. At the 31st FilmFestival Cottbus, Umut Karadağ is part of the five-member International Festival Jury and will decide on the awarding of the three main prizes with accompanying prize sculpture LUBINA on Saturday.
CLOSE UP TR is supported by the Federal Agency for Civic Education.