Queer Shorts

Rebirth 
Directors: Gökçe Oraloğlu & Zehra Gökcimen
Cast: Ahsen Gönülce
Turkey, 2017, 4’, color
Turkish with English subtitles
Genre: Fiction

Rebirth is a dance ritual. With every move, we are born again. With every little step, we cut the umbilical cord. With every turn, we create a new shell for ourselves. 

Rebirth reflects the transformation of a performer with every beat on stage. She/he tears apart the veils the society has stitched on her/himself during the ritual. She/he gives birth to her/his new identity over and over again.

I Didn’t Choose 
Director: Mehmetcan İncedal
Turkey, 2017, 15’, color
Turkish with English subtitles
Genre: Documentary

I Didn’t Choose is a short documentary sharing the life of a lesbian opening up to her family, her environment and herself despite the prejudices in Turkey and showing that her homosexuality is not a choice.

Solo
Director: Sertaç Koyuncu
Cast: Evrim Ezgi Yıldırım, Arınç Ekin, Ata Özuysal, Didem Öztürk, Hakan Güneş, Nilüfer Kurtuluş, Sinan Güçlü, Elçin Barik, Devrim Pınar Gürbüzoğlu, Ibrahim Özuysal, Sibel Özuysal 
Turkey, 2017, 4’32’’, color
Turkish with English subtitles
Genre: Fiction

Ezgi attracts the strangers’ eyes when walking in the street but answers them with her song.

“I’ll tell you something

What r u looking at Bro?”

Mikado
Directors: Nilgün Küçükbatman
Cast: Sezer Arıçay & Sefa Tokgöz
Turkey, 2017, 9’, color
Turkish with English subtitles
Genre: Fiction

Sefa and Mutlu are in a romantic relationship and are living together. The house they are living in belongs to Sefa and Sefa tries to preserve his personal space in this cohabitation. The issues of ownership, border and personal space in relationships are in the center of the short film.

Void
Director: Asya Leman Sanıtürk
Cast: Burçak Tekin, Ada Ümmühan Köse, Ali Can, Arjen Armanç, Yusuf Aydemir
Narrators: Atlas Boysan Oğuz, Burçak Tekin, Eda Demir, Emirhan Deniz Çelebi, Hasan Çınar Çomruk, Melike Arzu Şakiroğlu, Yusuf Ege Ertuğrul
Turkey, 2017, 13’25’’, color
Turkish with English subtitles
Genre: Documentary

How does the gendered Identity card affect people of different gender identities in their daily lives?

This docudrama presents trans and queer experiences to shed light on the conflict generated by mandatory presentation of the ID in most basic bureaucratic procedures (mail orders at the post office, change of residence, visa application, renting a house etc.)?

Muttering
Director: Simay Çalışkan & Nergis Karadağ
Turkey, 2017, 5’25’’, color
Turkish with English subtitles
No dialogue
Genre: Animation

People say there is no place or time to show your love to your significant other. But what if love shows itself in the same gender, just in the middle of the street.

Kurneqîz
Director: Gökhan Yalçınkaya
Cast: Zana Tolunay Yaman
Turkey, 2016, 9’20’’color
Kurdish with English and Turkish subtitles
Genre: Fiction

Kerim is 17 years old orphan boy who lives in a country. He has identity conflicts under his uncle’s pressure.

I Know My Murderer 
Director: Arif Akdenizli
Narrator: Elvin Tuygan
Turkey, 2016, 14’15’’, color
Turkish with English subtitles
Genre: Fiction

I watch myself. I couldn’t do it before. My new gained features increase the feeling of loneliness inside me. I started to travel. I am traveling all around the city; I am in and out of wagons. There is nobody here but there are people everywhere. Time flows differently. Sun goes to sleep and gifts us the night. My innocence is dreaming. This is a very far away no one knows my place. I found a copy in the darkness, a copy of the blueprints to pleasure in me. Here are fully grown black lilies. I have never seen them before, but I see that my generations’ best brains are destroyed by madness, left alone with hysterical nudity. The ones burning their money in the wastebasket, the ones who listened to the horrors of the wall. I have seen them all. How far the light can go, what I choose, what will I need. That is enough, I can’t ask for more. I have seen it all; there is nothing more to see.

Being LGBTI in the Hood
Director: Ada Ayşe İmamoğlu 
Cast: Tolga & Sezai
Turkey, 2017, 4’, color
Turkish with English subtitles
Genre: Documentary

Being LGBTI in The Hood is a short documentary about stories of LGBTI members of the hood through their eyes. Every LGBTI person try to write their own resistance story while trying to find spaces to live in cities and street they live in. So in this film, Tolga welcomes our camera to his house where he will share his own resistance story.

Trace
Director: Salih Salman
Cast: Ece Bakioğlu, Mine Yörük, Serhan Çınar
Turkey, 2017, 8’53’’, color
No dialogue
Genre: Fiction

Two women married with the same man. Two women liberated with each other’s bodies and spirit. Two women seeing each other in their reflections in the mirror and finally holding hands. Trace is the short tale of love between women and finding each other with small games.

Gavin is a BAFTA nominated and Cannes winning producer, currently producing Deborah Haywood’s first feature Pin Cushion for the British Film Institute. He’s Executive Producer at online channel NOWNESS. There he oversees an exciting slate of films, working with both emerging and leading creatives such as Björk, Nicolas Winding Refn, Naomi Campbell, Jarvis Cocker, Kibwe Tavares, Miranda July and Wayne McGregor. 

Producing credits include feature documentaries Boy Cheerleaders for the BBC and The People Vs George Lucas (SXSW, Edinburgh). Gavin’s produced projects over a number of platforms with Tate Modern, Virgin, Google, MOMA, Framestore, Film4 and London's Young Vic Theatre. His shorts have been selected for and won awards at major festivals, including Sundance four times, as well as reaching the final Oscar shortlist three times. 

Prior to producing, Gavin was a Talent Agent for 5 years. He is an alumni of the UK’s National Film & Television School.

Fatma Çolakoğlu earned her degree in film directing and film history at Emerson College and her MA in theatre directing from Goldsmiths College. She established Turkey’s first museum cinema in 2005 at İstanbul Modern. She cofounded the curatorial duo Maybe Art Projects with Ulya Soley. She has been working as the head of communication and public programming of Suna and İnan Kıraç Pera Museum and Istanbul Research Institute. Since 2008 she has also been curating Pera Museum’s film and video programming.

Born in 1965 in Turkey, Ümit Ünal is the scriptwriter for eight feature films including Teyzem (My Aunt) (1986), Hayallerim, Aşkım ve Sen (My Dreams, My Love and You) (1987).

His first feature film as a director is 9 (Dokuz, 2001) which won many awards in various film festivals and was the Official Turkish Entry for the 2003 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

He wrote and directed seven feature films including Istanbul Tales (Anlat İstanbul, 2004), Ara (2007), Shadowless (Gölgesizler, 2008), The Voice (Ses, 2010), The Pomegranate (Nar, 2011).

He was also the scriptwriter and one of the directors of Anlat İstanbul (2004).

His 2017 film Sofra Sırları (The Secrets of Turkish Cuisine) is currently in post-production. 

He has published four books: A collection of short stories, two novels and an autobiography.