Join us for the 4th annual Bloomington Turkish Film Festival sponsored by the Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies and the Turkish Student Association. This year’s festival title is “Identity in Turkish Cinema.” The selected films explore different aspects of identity issues in Turkey from ethnicity to locality.

This event is free and open to the public.

All films will be shown with English subtitles

Place: Wylie Hall, room 005
Time: 8 pm.


March 21-Friday
BEYNELMİLEL (THE INTERNATIONAL ) 2006

Directors: Muharrem Gülmez & Sırrı Süreyya Önder
Cast: Cezmi Baskın, Özgü Namal, Umut Kurt, Bahri Beyat, Meral Okay, Nazmi Qirix, Dilber Ay and Oktay Kaynarca
106 min.
In 1982, a group of local musicians in Adıyaman cannot earn their living due to the curfew implemented in those years. The solution they find results in jail. The martial law commander of the region wants to create a ‘modern orchestra’ with these local street musicians, and the tragicomic events begin. The orchestra is asked to prepare a welcoming ceremony for the Military Council’s visit to the town. There is yet another group who is eagerly waiting for the arrival of the council: the activist university students lead by Haydar, a political science student. The military law and the local orchestra on one side and the protesters on the other, unexpected events are about to unfold during the ceremony.


March 22-Saturday
GÜNEŞE YOLCULUK (JOURNEY TO THE SUN) 1999

Director: Yeşim Ustaoğlu
Cast: Nazmi Qirix, Newroz Baz, Mizgin Kapazan, Ara Güler, Lucia Marano
104 min.

An unlikely friendship forms the basis of this powerful story of loyalty and courage. Mehmet, a cheerful young man from western Turkey, and Berzan, a Kurdish rebel in the underground, become fast friends while escaping a flood of drunken and angry football hooligans in Istanbul. Young Mehmet (Newroz Şahin) is generally conservative, while Berzan (Nazmi Qirix) seems invested in the hunger strikes and the Kurdish rebellion in the east. Mehmet is unjustly arrested, but the experience makes him aware of his country's political realities. When the situation heats up, and Berzan is involved, Mehmet embarks on a sweeping, spiritual journey across Turkey to his friend's Kurdish homeland. Mehmet heads in the direction of the sunrise, by truck, tram and carriage, hauling with him a very heavy burden.


March 23-Sunday
EVE DÖNÜŞ (HOMECOMING) 2006

Director: Ömer Uğur
Cast: M. Ali Alabora, Sibel Kekilli, Savaş Dinçel, Altan Erkekli, Perihan Savaş
101 min.
Mustafa and his wife, Esma, are a working-class married couple whose only goal in life is to pay the installments of their recently purchased television set by working extra shifts. They are politically apathetic and have no relevance with the protests that are organized by the worker unions. One morning, when they wake up with the notice of a military coup, they still maintain their indifference and show no reaction to the political news. As a matter of fact, Mustafa becomes pleased by the military intervention as he thinks that national security is about to be achieved. However, one night, when he is mistakenly arrested for being a political activist with the code name “Şehmuz,” Mustafa begins to realize that life is not simply black and white.


March 28-Friday
KÜÇÜK ÖZGÜRLÜK (A LITTLE BIT OF FREEDOM) 2002

Director: Yüksel Yavuz
Cast: Çağdaş Bozkurt, Leroy Delmar, Necmettin Çobanoğlu, Sunay Girişken, Nazmi Qirix
102 min.

Set in Hamburg’s immigrant district of Altona, A Little Bit of Freedom tells the unusual story of the friendship between two young men. Baran is a Kurd whose relatives have helped him to come to Germany after the death of his parents. His asylum application was rejected just shy of his sixteenth birthday. No stranger to hard work, he survives by running errands for a Turkish fast-food restaurant. Not until Baran encounters the seventeen-year old Chernor - also an illegal and stateless immigrant – does his life gain impetus. The two are drawn together. But while Chernor tries to finance his future by dealing drugs, Baran’s past catches up with him…


March 29-Saturday
DAR ALANDA KISA PASLAŞMALAR (OFFSIDE) 2000

Director: Serdar Akar
Cast: Müjde Ar, Savaş Dinçel, Uğur Polat, Rafet El Roman, Şehnaz Çakιralp, and Erkan Can
120 min.

“Dar Alanda Kisa Paslasmalar”, takes us back to 25 years ago in Turkey. The early 1980s were the years when the initial shocks of the “economic liberalization” were felt strongly in a small neighborhood in Bursa. On such a shifting ground of socio-economics, the film narrates the survival efforts and the end of an amateur soccer team which is made up of the small shop owners of the neighborhood. Within and around this plot, the film also tells of the searching, the pains of love and the resilience of all the inhabitants of the neighborhood- from every walk of life.


March 30-Sunday
FOTOĞRAF (PHOTOGRAPH) 2001

Director: Kazιm Öz
Cast: Feyyaz Duman, Nazmi Qirix, Mizgin Kapazan, Zülfiye Dolu
65 mins

An imaginatively shot and revealing film following the stories of two young men traveling to eastern part of Turkey by bus. They sit next to each other, each of them hiding the reason for his journey from the other. Who are they? Where are they going? And why? A strange kind of proximity and warmth develops between the two of them. The road, the cigarettes and the discomfort they have shared leaves a trace that will reverberate after their paths have separated. These two young men share a bus trip without knowing that they are traveling to join the opposite sides of the same war.