Karaoğlan: The Man whose Name Was Written on the Mountains(2003)

Black Thoughts(en)

A man that is a stranger, is an incredibly easy man to hate. However, walking in a stranger’s shoes, even for a short while, can transform a perceived adversary into an ally. Power is found in coming to know our neighbor’s hearts. For in the darkness of ignorance, enemies are made and wars are waged, but in the light of understanding, family extends beyond blood lines and legacies of hatred crumble.

Prison or Exile(tr)

Nursel Aydoğan, Fırat Anlı and Zülküf Karatekin are linked by political exile in Europe after threatened prison sentences in Turkey.

The Monroe Doctrine(en)

The story of President Monroe's response to attempts by Spain to interfere in South America.

Daraya: A Library Under Bombs(fr)

At the heart of the Syrian civil war, a group of activists created an underground library in the besieged outskirts of Damascus. After years of blockade, they were forced to leave their city. But they managed to save their videos illustrating a unique experiment of cultural resistance under the bombs. This film, built between the past and the present, follows the story of three friends who met during the 2011 revolution and never gave up on their cultural resistance and peaceful struggle. Despite ceaseless bombing, they not only saved books from the rubble, but created a secret library, which quickly became a safe haven for peace, freedom and democracy: a special experience that they filmed and documented meticulously. Separated by war and exile, they are striving to reunite with each other. They reminisce on the past and tell us the extraordinary story of the library, based on dozens of hours of video archives. “A Library Under Bombs” is a story of hope and survival.

We The People 2.0(en)

American citizens who are normally marginalized, forgotten and left to fend against toxic dumps and other violations, come to understand that the only way to survive and save their communities is to challenge the system head-on.

Stony Paths(fr)

Stony Paths is the story of a walk across Anatolia. Arnaud Khayadjanian starts a trek in Turkey, on the land of his forefathers who survived the Armenian Genocide. Starting from a painting, from encounters and from accounts by his relatives, he goes on exploring the little known issue of the Righteous, all these anonymous people who saved lives in 1915.

Democracy for $ale(fr)

In the United States of America, lobbyists, corporations and billionaires invest millions of dollars to ensure that a suitable candidate, one inclined to support their personal ambitions and economic projects, wins an election, which inevitably affects everything, from the selection of local officials to presidential elections, creates countless conflicts of interest and undermines what supposedly used to be a model democracy.

Freedom Isn't Free — The Freedom Charter Today(en)

Since its adoption in June 1955 by the Congress movement, the Freedom Charter has been the key political document that acted as a beacon and source of inspiration in the liberation struggle against Apartheid. It was reputedly the main source that informed democratic South Africa’s liberal constitution and a constant reference point for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and rival political parties that it spawned since 1994, all claiming the Freedom Charter’s legacy. Freedom Isn’t Free assesses the history and role of the charter, especially in relation to key political and socio-economic aspects of developments in South Africa up to the present period. It includes rare archival footage with interviews of a cross-section of outspoken influential South Africans.

Der Jungfrauenwahn(de)

For young Muslims who live in a free society, how is the culture of origin of the parents compatible with their own wishes? What significance does the commandment of virginity have?

Byzance(en)

Byzance uses a text by Stefan Zweig to describe the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453. Before he turned to feature filmmaking in 1968 with Naked Childhood, Pialat worked on a series of short films, many of them financed by French television. Byzance is one of Pialat’s six Turkish shorts.

Istanbul(fr)

All of Pialat's Turkish films are uniquely interested in the country — especially Istanbul — as it was, not just as it is at the precise moment that Pialat is filming it. History informs these films in a big way, with the voiceover narration (which incorporates excerpts from various authors) introducing tension between the images of the modern-day city and the descriptions of incidents from its long and rich history. Istanbul is probably the most conventional documentary of Pialat's Turkish series, providing a general profile of the titular city, its different neighborhoods, and the different cultures and ways of living that coexist within its sprawling borders. As the other films in the series also suggest, Pialat sees Turkey, and Istanbul in particular, as a junction point between Europe and the East, between the old and the new, between history and modernity.

Maître Galip(fr)

Maître Galip is the most poetic and powerful of Pialat's Turkish Chronicles, using the poems of Nazim Hikmet to accompany a series of evocative images of ordinary working class people in Istanbul. This was the film that Pialat himself claimed was the most complete realization of what he was aiming for with his Turkish documentaries. It's not difficult to see why this was his favorite: here he abandons the historical commentary and documentary observation of the other shorts in favor of an emotional emphasis on the lives of the poor and the unemployed.

Golden Horn(fr)

La Corne d'or is mostly concerned with religious ritual, examining the mosque (and former cathedral) discussed in Byzance. As a contrast against Istanbul's status as a center of historical religious conflict, Pialat — drawing here on texts by the French poet Gérard de Nerval — also describes the city as a place of strange ethnic and religious harmony, with representatives of various cultures and religions living in close contact. He emphasizes the city's hybrid culture, its blend of Southern European and Arab influences, reflected in both its people and its very construction.

Pehlivan(en)

Pehlivan focuses on a three-day wrestling competition, an ancient tradition that dates back over a thousand years to the time of the Ottoman Empire, originating in the games the soldiers would play to entertain themselves in between battles. Maybe that's why there's more than a hint of homoeroticism in the way the wrestlers oil themselves up with grease, making sure to cover every inch of their bodies so that their opponents will be unable to get a grip. Pialat's closeups emphasize the men's muscular bodies jammed together and sliding off one another, posed in intimate, twisted arrangements, struggling desperately for a grip on each other's bodies. Arms are jammed down pants, one of the only places there's some potential for a handhold, and the whole thing is very suggestive and sensual, a form of intimate male contact that's sanctioned as a show of strength and masculinity.

Bosphore(en)

Short doc by Maurice Pialat. The first film in the series set at Turkey, Bosphore, is also the only one that was shot in color.

301(it)

Girls State(en)

What would American democracy look like in the hands of teenage girls? In this documentary, young female leaders from wildly different backgrounds in Missouri navigate an immersive experiment to build a government from the ground up.

Barking Island(fr)

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.

Reality Winner(en)

A state of secrets and a ruthless hunt for whistleblowers – this is the story of 25-year-old Reality Winner who disclosed a document about Russian election interference to the media and became the number one leak target of the Trump administration.

Attila 74: The Rape of Cyprus(el)

An indictment of the protagonists in the Cypriot civil war.