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International Short Film Competition
Trains
Maciej Drygas
TRAINS is a found-footage documentary composed entirely of archive footage and sound design that creates a collective portrait of people in 20th century Europe, capturing their hopes, desires, dramas and tragedies. A train compartment is a place where people are taken out of their everyday context for a while. Sometimes the journey is accompanied by the hope that something will change in our lives upon reaching the destination, or conversely, by a stark absence of hope. And yet the history of the 20th century unfolds in railway carriages in a repetitive refrain. Every few years, hauntingly similar scenes play out in railway stations around the world: carriages full of men leaving for war, only to return wounded or as casualties. This cycle is followed by an exodus of civilians, evacuees mingling with prisoners of war returning from camps, and soldiers of victorious armies leading the defeated, until ordinary passengers reappear at stations.

International Short Film Competition
Enemy Number Three
Vladimir Sumashedov
During World War II, artist and photo montage master Alexander Zhytomyrsky uses his art to convince the enemy to end the bloodshed. Propaganda leaflets — passports to surrender — are dropped from planes in millions, aimed at soldiers on the front lines. Unlike bombs, they do not take lives, they are meant to save them. The creator of these leaflets works hard every day to see the humanity in his enemy amidst the hatred. Will he be able to preserve his talent and himself in this struggle?

Special Film Screenings
Los Pasaroz Sefaradis (Yönetmenlerin Katılımıyla)
Rose Modiano, Alberto Modiano
The Jews who arrived in Ottoman lands 530 years ago brought many cultures with them. Naturally, this included their language. Over time, this language blended with other cultures to form a new, unique language called “Judeo Espagnol”. Although it is in danger of being forgotten, the older generation continues to preserve it in areas where they live together, primarily in Izmir and Istanbul.
The documentary is about the Los Pasharos Sefaradis Group, Kula 930, and many other Jewish musicals that have emerged over more than 30 years, the formation of the group of four people, and the concerts they have given.

Student Documentaries from Türkiye
Evara
Cansu Carlak
Evara, which means gift of God, deals with the cycle journey of our character who finds herself in the middle of the climate change
crisis in the conflict between city and nature. Based on the philosophy of second nature and social ecology, Evara is a critique consisting of questioning, resistance, observation and feelings and is reflected through performance art.

Best International Short Film
Sukande Kasáká | Ailing Land
Kamikia Kisedje, Fred Rahal
Kamikia and Lewaiki, from the Khĩsêdjê people, are forced to abandon their largest village after detecting pesticide contamination that poisons their land, rivers, and food. Surrounded by monocultures of soy, they fight to protect their culture, their families, and their territory, facing an invisible enemy that threatens their very existence.

En İyi Uluslararası Uzun Metraj Belgesel Film
Mother of Snow Cranes
Iiris Härmä
Over 90 years old, Ellen Vuosalo has lived many lives. First as a Finnish immigrant in Canada, then as an American citizen and student of zoology at UCLA and finally as a Mother of Cranes in Iran. Iiris Härmä's Mother of Snow Cranes tells the story of an incredible woman's extraordinary life, from love to tragedy to revolution. It is a story about nature, humanity, and the role of women in both the West and Iranian culture. Or as Ellen herself says " What a life! What a world!"
Reference story: Unlike the world famous story of Betty Mahmoody (NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER, 1991), MOTHER OF SNOW CRANES tells the story of the Western woman who had to stay in Iran and later who decided to stay.
Our production company Guerilla Films has produced award-winning documentary films for international broadcasters (YLE, SVT, NHK, ARTE, NETFLIX etc.), cinemas and film festivals for more than 20 years.
Mother of Snow Cranes (orig. Kurkien äiti)
Duration: 78 mins
Director: Iiris Härmä
Producer: Visa Koiso-Kanttila/ Guerilla Films
Production Country Finland
Filming location Iran
Release Date: Cinematic release in Finland September 2024.

Special Film Screenings
Thank You Kaf Kaf (With the Director in Attendance)
Ömer Gümüşe
Through the eyes of the Karşıyaka Sports Club announcer, we witness the club's story, its history and culture, touching on the passion of its supporters, in an unconventional account of Karşıyaka Sports Club's one-season tale.

Student Documentaries from Türkiye
Playing on the Road
Eminhan Çakır
The documentary focuses on the daily lives of young artists performing in the streets and venues of İzmir. Each artist, with their own unique style and story, meets audiences in public spaces, highlighting the importance of music in their lives. Despite bans, pressures, and hardships, these young musicians strive to sustain their art and lives, seeking support and solidarity. Their stories of resilience and creativity, intertwined with the power of music, not only inspire but also reveal the ways in which they hold on to life and nurture hope.

International Short Film Competition
The Stonemason’s Daughter
Arturo Franco
The film was shot around the place of O Fieiro, a small village of no more than twelve houses and nine inhabitants, among them Rosa. A ninety-year-old woman who dedicates her last years to watching the rain through the window. Her father was a canteiro, a house builder, before the reservoir changed everything. Rosa remembers how her father lifted the stones and the people transported them from one place to another.
It is shown as an abstract visual poem where the rain and the stones are the protagonists of the story Rosa tells us.

Best International Experimental Documentary Film
Under my Mother's Roof
Christian Abi Abboud
A film where fiction and reality collide; Richard and Kim decide to cowrite with the filmmaker, pieces of their future lives together. “Under my mother’s roof” is a portrait of a man who is facing his biggest fear; the diagnoses of his love with autism. A journey which will lead him back to his childhood biggest trauma,
the loss of his mother.

International Feature Film Competition
I Just Keep Dancing
Natasha Fefelova, Galina Goldfeld
An American, a Japanese, a Canadian, a Frenchman and a Brazilian work as ballet dancers in very different Russian cities. The world around them collapses for reasons beyond their control, and the characters have to make the most difficult choice in their lives. A choice on which not only their career, but also their destiny depends.

International Feature Film Competition, Palestine Selection
Fatherland
Özgür Canel
Arab/Palestinian make up 20% of the total Israeli population. They are Christian, Muslim, Bedouin, Druze etc. Not much is known about this minority who hold Israeli nationality. They live, work, go to school in Israel, but do they feel Isreali? What does it mean to be Arab in a jewish state.

Belgesel Fotoğraf Gösterimleri
Mahalleme Dokunma (With the Director in Attendance)
Emine Kart
Let me tell you a bit about the neighbourhood we didn't want to touch. 100th Year, Workers' Blocks Neighbourhood.
Built for workers, squatters have been living there for years. Thousands of buildings have sprung up around it, glass towers, shopping centres, mosque projects offering donation opportunities on credit card instalments, demolitions, constructions, bars and barricades. We didn't want this; we deserved better. The year was 2013... The whole country was united around three or five trees. The wind from those trees enveloped a student and retired neighbourhood in Ankara.
Do you know what we wanted?
We didn't want them to build that road separating the school from the neighbourhood. We didn't want them to cut down the forest that was home to all kinds of trees and animals. We wanted to throw in your faces every day the image of the workers and women your system killed, and those you slaughtered in the name of labour, peace and democracy, erasing them the very next day. We wanted a tree planted, a field we cultivated together, a garden where we could come together and tend to the crops. We wanted a patch of land open to labour and sustenance, with no lock on its gate.

Student Documentaries from Türkiye
Longarms
Cemal Karaaslan
Dilara is an art student striving to become a successful painter despite the challenges in her life and dreams of studying abroad. Cemal, a film student, wants to document her journey, knowing that their last days together could come at any moment. However, things do not go as planned. They try to overcome the difficulties of pursuing art and creating something meaningful in a small town with the support of their friends.
Dilara, hayatındaki zorluklara rağmen başarılı bir ressam olmaya çalışan ve yurt dışında eğitim almak isteyen bir resim öğrencisidir. Sinema öğrencisi Cemal, arkadaşı Dilara'yla geçireceği son günlerin her an gelebileceğini düşünerek onun belgeselini çekmek ister fakat işler planladıkları gibi gitmez. Küçük bir şehirde sanatla uğraşmanın ve bir şeyler üretmenin güçlüğünü arkadaşlarının desteği ile aşmaya çalışırlar.

Documentaries from Türkiye
Back to the Land
Kerem Kurtuluş
Tevfik, who moved to New York with his family at the age of 2, relocated to his grandfather's home in Rize, where his father was born, at the age of 35 and started a new life there.
Tevfik has been living in Rize for 19 years and is now the father of two children, working in agriculture. He sustains his life by producing tea and kiwi.

International Short Film Competition
Not My Film
Astra Zoldnere
What happens if older people challenge stereotypes in films about aging? Six seniors re-perform scenes of poor health, sexual invisibility, and gendered stereotypes of the wise old man and the bad witch. Toward the end of the film, the participants rebel against these cinematic images, proving that older age can be associated with love, sexuality, and self-revelation.

Özel Film Gösterimleri
Bir Ömür Deniz
Ahmet Özkan, Veyis Polat
This film views the sea not as a landscape, but as a living space. Here, the sea is not a romantic backdrop; it is a life woven with sweat, patience and repetition.
We approach Mavişehir Fishermen's Shelter not as a place, but as a memory.
This harbour, whose location has changed with the filling of the shores, bears the traces of over a century of labour. Against concrete, time and transformation, we defend the continuity of the relationship established with the sea.
This manifesto aims to make the great stories of small boats visible.
The labour of fishermen who set sail in boats less than seven metres long is a form of living knowledge that is in danger of being forgotten in the shadow of industrial production. We stand against the loss of this knowledge.
Repeating the mending of nets, the threading of needles, the setting out to sea before dawn... Because repetition here is not ordinary; it is resistance. This order, re-established every day, is an expression of the ancient covenant between man and the sea.
While telling the story of the fishermen, this film focuses on silence, modesty, and the power of collective production. It sees accepting what the sea provides as a virtue.
We take on the responsibility of photography, the camera, and witnessing. We advocate not just looking, but seeing; not just recording, but understanding.
A Lifetime at Sea is not an elegy for the past; it is a mark left for the future.
As long as this way of life built with the sea continues, cultural memory will also continue to live on.
Some lives are not written on land, but in the wake of the waves.
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