22nd Ankara Film Festival kicks off

The 22nd Ankara International Film Festival starts Thursday and will continue until March 27 under the organization of the World Mass Media Foundation.

The festival offers a rich program with thematic selections including the latest films by directors such as Jerzy Skolimowski, Jan Svankmajer, Werner Herzog, Xavier Dolan, Bong Joon-ho, Tony Gatlif, Alain Corneau, Olivier Assayas, special sections about Kazakh and Italian cinema and an impressive selection named "Human Against Nature" and films by directors like Bertrand Tavernier, Takeshi Kitano and Ken Loach.

The festival will also feature panel discussions and workshops with the participation of filmmakers from Turkey and around the world.

The opening ceremony of the festival will be held Thursday with the presentation of the Festival Special Prizes. The Emre Kartarı Jazz Band will perform film music during the opening ceremony.

Successful Turkish films in recent years will compete at the National Feature Competition organized within the scope of the festival. The films will compete in 16 categories including Best Film, Mahmut Tali Öngören Special Prize and Best Director and will be evaluated by a jury including Erdal Beşikçioğlu, Murat Özer, Serdar Akar, Fadik Sevin Atasoy and Ayla Kanbur.

Also, the Cinema Writers Association, or SİYAD, will present the SİYAD Best Film Award. Directors and artists of competition films will meet the audiences within the scope of the award.

Thirty-five films will compete for the National Short Film Competition while 18 films will compete for the National Documentary Film Competition. Directors of short and documentary films will also be present during screenings.

In the section titled "Human Against Nature," the festival will call on audiences to think about how nature becomes unbalanced and the reasons behind it. Iranian director Ramin Bahrani’s film "Plastic Bag" is one of the highlights of this section. The film features the epic journey of a plastic bag in search of its lost maker. Another important film in this section is Danish Michael Madsen’s documentary "Into Eternity." This feature documentary takes viewers on a journey never seen before into the underworld and into the future.


One of the most important sections of the 22nd Ankara International Film Festival will be dedicated to Polish director Jery Skolimowski. His six films, including |Four Nights with Anna," "Hands Up," "Barrier," "Thirty Door Key," "Walkover," "Essential Killing" and "Identification Marks: None," will be shown in the festival.

Another section of the festival will be “From All Over the World,” featuring 11 films that have been screened in the world’s most important festivals from America to the Far East and from Africa to Europe as well as awarded and undiscovered films.

The "Masters" program of the festival includes the newest films by the world’s most renowned directors. Also, three filmmakers who passed away in 2010 will be commemorated in the "Memoriam" section. Films by Satoshi Kon, Alain Corneau and Claude Chabrol will be screened in the festival.

The festival will dedicate a section to Kazakhstan cinema with three films as well as a section for Italian films. Also, one film by master directors Cafer Panahi and Muhammed Resulof will be shown in the festival.

The "Midnight Cinema" will present films from horror cinema. Among these films will be "To My Mother and Father," "I Saw the Devil," "The Legend of Beaver Dam," "Deus Irae" and "Off Season."

The Street of Art events, which have continued for three years as part of the festival, will carry the enthusiasm of the festival to the streets again.

Tickets for the festival are on sale for the same price as last year. The noon sessions are 2.50 Turkish Liras, 2:30 and 5 p.m. sessions are 5 liras and 7:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. sessions are 10 liras. Short and documentary film screenings are 2.50 liras for both sessions. Festival tickets are on sale at the box offices.

The screenings will be held at Batı Movie Theater, Büyülü Fener Kızılay, Çankaya Municipality Contemporary Arts Center and the Goethe Institut Ankara. All screenings at Contemporary Arts Center and the Goethe Institut Ankara are free of charge.


/Hurriyet Daily News/