Festival on Wheels changes its route to eastern Turkey

Audiences will be able to pick from a program of 156 films spread across the genres of feature, short and documentary.

The 14th Festival on Wheels, organized by the Ankara Cinema Association with the support of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Kars Municipality, begins its journey today in the eastern city of Kars, before stopping in Artvin, a northeastern Black Sea city from Nov. 14 to 16.

The festival will travel beyond Europe this year, to the United States, Mexico, Argentina, India, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Audiences will be able to choose from a program of 156 films, spread across the feature, short and documentary genres.

Golden Goose Competition
Ten films, examples of contemporary world cinema, will compete for the Golden Goose, Silver Goose and the Cinema Writers Association, or SİYAD, Awards in the third International Golden Goose Competition.

The best film, chosen by a panel of international judges, will win the Golden Goose Award, worth 20,000 euros, the Silver Goose Award will win 5,000 euros.

The spectacular line up includes “Wolke 9” (Cloud 9), which first caused controversy in Germany and then at other festivals; “The Snow,” a co-production between Bosnia-Herzegovina, Germany, France and Iran; “The Hunger,” a memoir of the IRA Hunger Strike in Maze Prison in 1981 under the leadership of Bobby Sands; “Lake Tahoe,” a Mexican film that won a string of awards at the Berlin, Cannes, Copenhagen and Sundance film festivals; Goran Markovic’s latest film, “The Tour,” which earned him a Best Director award in Montreal as well as a Fipresci prize; “Three Wise Men,” by well-known director Mika Kaurismäki and another Mexican production, Rodrigo Pla’s “The Desert Within.”

Two films from Turkey will also be competing for an award; Semih Kaplanoğlu’s highly anticipated film “Milk” and Özcan Alper’s first feature film “Autumn.”

Other Turkish films at the festival are “My Marlon and Brando” by Hüseyin Karabey who received the Best Director award at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival; Derviş Zaim’s latest feature “Dot,” “Pandora’s Box,” by Yeşim Ustaoğlu; “Three Monkeys,” which won Nuri Bilge Ceylan the Best Director Award at the 61st Cannes Film Festival; and Seyfi Teoman’s feature “Summer Book,” which has won Turkish cinema a succession of awards this year.

Italian Political Cinema
The section dedicated to Italian political cinema features two films by Elio Petri, “Working Class Goes to Heaven,” which won the Cannes Golden Palm Award in 1972 and “Possession Is Not Theft.” Both films will be screened with the generous contribution of the Italian Cultural Institute.

Nation and Its Fragments
Festival audiences will have the chance to watch Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 classic “Aleksandr Nevsky,” with commentary by Murat Belge; Ken Loach’s “Ae Fond Kiss” and Lars Von Trier’s “Europa.” All three writers frame their reviews in the context of nationalism, the theme of this section. There will also be a panel discussion, “Nationalism in Kars,” which will be attended by Murat Belge, Ferhat Kentel and Mesut Yeğen.

Fake Documentaries: Mockumentary
These films will be shown for the first time in Turkey and although they tell stories that purport to belong to the documentary genre, they are more fictional than fiction itself. For all their faking, however, they often portray a version of "reality" as much as documentaries can.

“Punishment Park,” directed by Peter Watkins, “This is Spinal Tap,” by Rob Reiner and Achero Manas’s “November” will reflect the real world as represented by fake documentaries on screen.

Shortly Romania
The Festival on Wheels also has a section allocated to Romanian cinema, a rising star in recent years. The section will serve as a showcase of recent Romanian short films.

Additionally, a panel discussion on Romania-Turkey co-productions will be held during the festival, with the participation of Romanian and Turkish producers, directors and cinema institutions.

Cinema meetings in Kars
Festival guests from different countries and cultures around the world will meet in Kars to watch films together, share experiences and create. The busy program, packed with a variety of events including panel discussions, Q&A sessions, workshops and concerts, will blow the festival wind across Kars throughout the week.

International festival agents will be among the guests of the Festival on Wheels this year. Ludmila Cvikova from the Rotterdam Film Festival, Freddy Olsson from the Göteborg Film Festival and Aude Hesbert from the Paris Cinema Festival, are all coming to Kars to select films for the Turkey sections of their festivals.

Lets talk cinema
The “Let’s Talk Cinema in Kars” meetings will be held for the third time this year, to bring together amateurs and professionals in the film world to exchange experiences and ideas. Film students and cinema lovers from many cities around Turkey will attend a program of workshops during the week with the best tutors in their fields, as well as take part in the Let’s Talk Cinema meetings.

Five different workshops for young filmmakers
In the festival, there are several workshops targeting young people from different disciplines and encouraging them to produce joint projects. This year director Reha Erdem will give a film direction workshop over three days.

Gökhan Tiryaki, director of photography on “Climates” and “Three Monkeys,” will lead a digital cinematography workshop; Natali Yeres, art director of “Journey to the Sun,” “A Saint in Laleli,” “In Nowhere Land” and Derviş Zaim’s latest film “Dot,” will host a workshop on art direction; Çiçek Kahraman, editor of “The Little Doomsday” and “The Break and Summer Book,” will give an editing workshop; and Nurşen Bakır, known for her experimental film work, will lead a workshop on experimental film-making. The workshops aim for groups of 10 people.

Concerts
Festival evenings in Kars will be galvanized this year by a line-up of glittering live performances. This year’s events include performances by Baba Zula, Replikas and Kırıka and several musicians from Hungary.