The Heavy Burden (2019)

Times and Winds

In a small, poor village leaning over high rocky mountains, the villagers are simple and diligent people who struggle to cope with a harsh nature. They earn their living off the earth and a few animals they feed. Fathers always prefer one of their sons. Mothers command their daughters ruthlessly. Ömer, the son of the imam, wishes hopelessly for the death of his father. When he understands that wishful thinking does not have any concrete results, he begins to search for childish ways to kill his father. Yakup is in love with his teacher, and one day after seeing his father spying on the teacher he dreams too, like Ömer, of killing his father. Yıldız studies and tries to manage the household chores imposed by her mother. She learns with irritation about the secrets of the relationship between men and women.

Love in the Time of Corona

The movie follows Kurdistan during the Covid-19 crisis in 2019, and how it ruined relationships between loved ones.

Agraharathil Kazhutai

A donkey strays into a village dominated by the upper caste Brahmins.

Bliss

A young woman of about 17 years old, named Meryem (Ozgu Namal), has been raped, and her village's customs call for her to be killed to restore honor and dignity to her family and village. The eldest son of the village leader, Cemal (Murat Han), is ordered to take Meryem to Istanbul and kill her, but at the last minute he cannot complete the task.

Steam: The Turkish Bath

Francesco and Marta run a husband-and-wife design company in Rome. When Francesco's aunt dies in Instanbul he travels there to sort out the hamam turkish steam bath that she left him. He finds a love and warmth in his relatives' Instanbul home that is missing from his life in Italy.

My Child

What happens when your child comes out to you? In this feature documentary, parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gender individuals in Turkey intimately share their experiences with the viewer, as they redefine what it means to be parents in this conservative society.

The Girl with the Red Scarf

Asya, a peasant girl, marries İlyas, a truck driver. The couple, who love each other very much, are separated when İlyas cheats on her, and their epic love story comes to an unexpected end. After that, Asya takes her son and wanders away, not knowing where she is going, until a familiar hand reaches out to help her selflessly.

The Breath

A small task force of the Turkish army have to defend a relay station in the middle of nowhere against a possible terrorist raid.

Atatürk: Father of Modern Turkey

Docudrama examining the life of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the Republic of Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Monuments to him can be found in every city; the anniversary of his death is commemorated every year; derogatory words about him are punishable by law. Rarely has a politician changed a society so radically in such a short time as Atatürk did Turkey.

Blackboards

Itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?

My Prostitute Love

Halil goes to a bar with his friends and meets Sabiha, a prostitute, and they fall in love. Two lovers want to escape their past and live together. However, Sabiha knows little about Halil's life, and she has to face some facts.

Au Hasard Balthazar

The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.

Seaburners

Denise, a botanist, is working in the swamps in a part of Turkey, planting and researching local flora. In her evenings she sometimes meets with her lover Hamit, a simple man at first glance. But he is making his living with human trafficking which he keeps a secret from Denise. When Hamit learns that Denise is being sent back to her home country soon, one final trafficking job takes a dark outcome.

The Lamb

In a small village, young Mert is about to get traditionally circumcised, but the family does not have the money to follow up with the circumcision celebration. The family wants to be able to serve lamb meat to the guests at the celebration. Mert’s older sister scares him that if they cannot afford a lamb the father will slaughter him instead.

Ararat

Interrogated by a customs officer, a young man recounts how his life was changed during the making of a film about the Armenian genocide.

Envy

Seniha lives with her brother Halit and his wife Mükerrem. When Nüzhet, the handsome son of the richest family in town, sets his eyes on the married Mükerrem, she is at first disgusted with Nüzhet’s overt sexual innuendo. However, it isn’t long before Mükerrem yields to her lust and thus they embark on an affair. When Seniha finally reveals her sister-in-law’s un-virtuousness to her brother, Seniha has no idea what the consequences will be and how cruelly her destiny will change.

Piano Girl

The story of an exile man who came from Russia. He is the last descended of his family.

The Angel of Vengeance: The Female Hamlet

Hamlet returns home from drama school in United States, after the cold-blooded assassination of her father by her uncle, who has married Hamlet’s mother. After seeing her father’s ghost, Hamlet decides to feign insanity, in order to get to the truth.

Only You

The passionate love between a former boxer and a beautiful blind woman.

The Wild Pear Tree

Fresh out of university, a Turkish young man with literary aspirations returns to his home village, and to his father, a debt-ridden man with a gambling problem.

The Impeccables

Two sisters in their early thirties find themselves isolated in the Aegean summer cottage of their childhood, as they must deal with their uneasy sibling relationship and confront their devastating recent past past.

Autumn

Arrested while a student in university, Yusuf is released from prison after ten years. He returns home and is welcomed by his sick and elderly mother. Soon he will meet Eka, a beautiful Georgian girl who is a sex worker, and love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and elude loneliness.

Welcome

Bilal is 17 years old, a Kurdish boy from Iraq. He sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe. He wants to get to England to see his love who lives there. Bilal finally reaches Calais, but how do you cover 32 kilometers of the English Channel when you can't swim? The boy soon discovers that his trip won't be as easy as he imagined... The community of struggling illegal aliens in Calais

Fate

Musa, a customs clerk, lives quietly with his mother. Tragedy and change come for him, as they do for everyone, and he must confront his own attitude towards life’s absurdity.

Barking Island

Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, 1910. There are too many stray dogs on the streets, so the government decides to deport thousands of them on a desert island, off the coast of the city.

Giant

Wealthy rancher Bick Benedict and dirt-poor cowboy Jett Rink both woo Leslie Lynnton, a beautiful young woman from Maryland who is new to Texas. She marries Benedict, but she is shocked by the racial bigotry of the White Texans against the local people of Mexican descent. Rink discovers oil on a small plot of land, and while he uses his vast, new wealth to buy all the land surrounding the Benedict ranch, the Benedict's disagreement over prejudice fuels conflict that runs across generations.

Head-On

With the intention to break free from the strict familial restrictions, a suicidal young woman sets up a marriage of convenience with a forty-year-old addict, an act that will lead to an outburst of envious love.

The Edge of Heaven

The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.

The Lark Farm

The Lark Farm is set in a small Turkish town in 1915. It deals with the genocide of Armenians, looking closely at the fortunes, or rather, misfortunes of one wealthy Armenian family.

Burning Days

With the mayoral election approaching, the newly-appointed state prosecutor of a small Turkish town suffering from a water supply crisis gradually descends into trouble after a young local woman is raped.

Are You Listening Mother?

A Kurdish woman is sentenced to six years of house arrest with an electronic ankle bracelet. The charge: supporting terrorist activities. From now on an invisible border runs through her garden in a Turkish village, which she repeatedly trespasses. Her older son is torn between obedience and rebellion. How far will he go to protect his mother from further punishment?

Home & Key

The story of this film is an aesthetic narration of the death of a Kurdish Family, along the 20th century.

Road to Istanbul

Elisabeth lives a quiet live in the Belgian countryside with her young adult daughter Elodie. After the divorce from her husband Elisabeth took care of her daughter on her own. When Elodie disappears over night and Elisabeth discovers that she travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State, she begins her journey to find her daughter.

Zorba the Greek

An uptight English writer traveling to Crete on a matter of business finds his life changed forever when he meets the gregarious Alexis Zorba.

120

During the Sarikamis Battle, the Ottoman army runs out of ammunition and appeals to the people of Van for help, who happen to have supplies. However, the First World War is on and all men are fighting at four corners of the empire and therefore can not respond to to the appeal. The young children of Van want to do something...

Gallipoli

As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank—both agile runners—become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.

Five Minarets in New York

Two Turkish anti-terrorist agents are sent to New York City on a mission to find and bring back the dangerous Islamic leader codenamed "Dajjal", believed to be hiding in there. Working with the FBI and NYPD, the agents orchestrate the arrest of Hadji Gumus, a well-respected Muslim scholar and family man who years before fled to the United States after being released from a Turkish prison, where he served time for murder. This tale love, friendship, peace and prejudices, takes us on a journey seeking to answer the question of whether innocence or guilt even matters to one who lusts for vengeance.

My Small Land

Sarya lives between three worlds: Having fled from Turkey to Japan, her small family tries to maintain their Kurdish traditions. On the other hand, Sarya, who arrived when she was five, feels at home in Japan. But then, the family loses its refugee-status. Life becomes unpredictable and their days in Japan seem numbered. A haunting story about the balancing act of finding your place in the world.

Agony

A mentally handicapped girl has been raped a few months ago. Her parents, Jalal and Maryam are trying to abort the baby and get rid of it but something worse happens

Under the Stars

Louka, whose parents were killed in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, persuades a beautiful smuggler to take him over the border to visit his village, where a magical experience awaits them.

Dry Summer

A scheming tobacco farmer sets out to ruin his competition by diverting the local water to his own property.

Bed Bug

Idris, who has made a habit of coming home late, comes home early that day. He sees his wife trying to wipe the lipstick off of her lips, and at the same time, the window of the house is open in a cloudy sky. The feeling of doubt has already begun to gnaw through Idris like a bed bug.

Refugee Poetry

The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.

5 Fingers

During WWII, the valet to the British Ambassador to Ankara sells British secrets to the Germans while trying to romance a refugee Polish countess.

The Confession

A taut, beautifully acted psychological drama about a husband who suspects his wife of having an affair, but is terrified that confronting her about it might prove she really is.

Krisha

When Krisha returns to her estranged family for Thanksgiving dinner, past demons threaten to ruin the festivities.

Nefta Football Club

In the south of Tunisia, two football fan brothers bump into a donkey lost in the middle of the desert on the border of Algeria. Strangely, the animal wears headphones over its ears.

The Small Town

Told from the perspective of two children, and in four parts which run parallel to seasons, The Small Town describes the relationships between members of a small-town family. Both brother and sister witness the complexities of the adult world, as well as the mysteries of life and nature.

Murat Göğebakan: Kalbim Yaralı

Turkish singer Murat Göğebakan embarks on a successful musical career, until he receives a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Holiday

Sascha, the young and beautiful trophy girlfriend of a Danish drug lord, arrives at his holiday villa in the seaside town of Bodrum, on the Turkish Riviera, where she is welcomed into his inner circle. Under the summer sun, she lives a carefree dream of luxury and fun until she meets Tomas, a Dutch traveler trying to discover himself.

War Pony

The interlocking stories of two Lakota boys growing up on Pine Ridge Reservation. At 23, Bill just wants to make something of himself. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Matho can’t wait to become a man. Bound by their shared search for belonging, each of the boys grapple with identity, family, and loss, as they navigate their unique paths to manhood.

Out of the Blue

Instead of enjoying her vacations in a peaceful peninsula of Turkey, Anna feels stuck in a strange torpor, while her boyfriend, Thomas, doesn't seem to notice it at all. Later in the afternoon, when a little girl suddenly disappears on the beach, Anna awakens and decides to go and find her, despite the unknown and the nightfall.

Wild is the Spring

Through a series of vignettes from the ancient and war-torn Levant, WILD IS THE SPRING captures moments in the lives of diverse ethnic communities who struggle to survive when life descends into chaos.

EO

The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.

Turkish Problems

A film trilogy telling the vicissitudes of a Turkish family, their quarrels, dilemmas, conversations and everyday life interspersed with ups and downs. The core of history is a gentlemen's duel for the title of the main character between Wąsacz and Jid and their competition for the favor of the main heroine. Then, indirectly, their friend Siwy joins the fight for this title.

Aftersun

Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between miniDV footage as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't.

Mustang

In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live under strict rule while members of their family prepare their arranged marriages.

Oscenità

A group of people come up with provocative or downright nasty sexual scenarios like rape, bestiality, tree branch masturbation, candle masturbation, corncob masturbation, whipping, lesbian orgies, toe masturbation, and bathtub assault.

Boats Out of Watermelon Rinds

In his award-winning debut feature film, director Ahmet Ulucay portrays the innocence of childhood and the lure of the cinema for two teens in a small Turkish village. Working for a watermelon seller by day, Remet spends his evenings trying to rebuild a film projector with his friend Mehmet. Both have big dreams to be famous film directors one day.

Miraç

Yusuf and Ali are two little friends. Friends have lost Ahmet and believe that he is in heaven. For this reason, Ahmet is making gifts from his hands to announce his voices. To get to the 7th floor of the wing, they will join the villages with the minds of the villagers, and they will be adventurously adventurous. The film aims to show the Prophet Muhammad's exodus from Mirac's eyes, not from their world.