27th Festival on Wheels kicks off in capital Ankara

Duvar English

The Ankara Cinema Association's Festival on Wheels kicked off in Turkish capital Ankara on Dec. 2. The Festival will took place in Ankara until Dec. 8, then it will raise the curtain in the Black Sea provinces of Sinop between Dec. 9-11 and Kastamonu from Dec. 12-14.

The poster for the 27th Festival on Wheels once again bears the signature of Behiç Ak, the veteran illustrator who has supported the Festival since 1995 with his designs.

The 27th Festival on Wheels Ankara screenings are held at the Doğan Taşdelen Contemporary Arts Centre with the support of the opposition-run Ankara Metropolitan Municipality and Çankaya Municipality. The screenings in Sinop will be held at Halk Eğitim Merkezi from with the support of the Municipality of Sinop and the screenings in Kastamonu will be held at the Kastamonu University Ahmet Yesevi Hall with the support of the Kastamonu University.

Turkey 2022 section consists of brand new films which were already presented and awarded at the national and international film festivals. The selection includes Belmin Söylemez’s Mirror Mirror (Ayna Ayna), Ümran Safter's Guilt (Kabahat), Selcen Ergun's Snow and The Bear (Kar ve Ayı), Özcan Alper's Black Night (Karanlık Gece), Emin Alper’s Burning Days (Kurak Günler) and Çiğdem Sezgin's Suna.

As in previous years, there is a World Cinema section in the Festival, which is supported by the Embassy of the USA, Embassy of Belgium, Embassy of Denmark, Embassy of Ireland, Embassy of Spain, Embassy of Israel, Embassy of Poland and Goethe Institut Ankara.

This selection consists of Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts, Anna Jadowska’s Woman On The Roof, Sophie Linnenbaum's The Ordinaries, Patricio Guzmán’s documentary My Imaginary Country, Jake Paltrow’s June Zero, Colm Bairéad's The Quiet Girl, Lukas Dhont's Close, and Martin Boulocq’s The Visitor.

The Festival presents three films in Endangered caategory, a section of the program emphasizing press freedom. This section is supported by the United States Embassy in Turkey.

This category consists of Alan J. Pakula's All the President’s Men, Matt Sarnecki's The Killing of a Journalist, and Ramona S. Diaz's A Thousand Cuts.

Another of the Festival’s notable sections, Speaking Up!, brings together two pictures that deal with freedom of thought and expression. The section includes Martin Ritt’s 1976 drama, The Front, and Tommy Walker and Ross Hockrow’s 2022 documentary Kaepernick & America.

The 27th Festival on Wheels will also present a 79-minute version of the 1921 film Just Around the Corner in the Trailblazing Women section. Only two incomplete prints were known to exist in film archives, but after a lot painstaking work the film was made up to its current 79-minute version. Just Around the Corner will screen to the music of BaBa ZuLa.

On the other hand, this year saw the death of French-Swiss cinema legend Jean-Luc Godard who, despite being from the same generation, never got to meet the centenarian writer-director Ebrahim Golestan. However, the two filmmakers are brought together in the documentary See You Friday, Robinson, which will be screening at the 27th Festival on Wheels.