15.03.2018
Text: Melikşah Altuntaş
Taking place for the 14th time this year, Akbank Film Festival’s exciting program brings together various films and filmmakers from all around the world once more. Aside from Short Film Forum, talks, special screenings and master classes will also be available for those who would like to experience the festival to the fullest. Here are 10 reasons not to miss out on Akbank Short Film Festival this year:
1. This year’s program includes quiet a rich selection: almost 100 shorts as well as 10 medium and full features, chosen out of 1342 applicant films from over 65 different countries.
2. You can catch up with the latest examples of the short film scene in the Festival Shorts section, which will include 14 best films chosen out of 635 applicants by a pre-jury; as well as the international short film competition section -World Shorts -, which will include another selection of 14 out of 707 films.
3. The Perspective section, which includes 56 shorts that have traveled festivals like Cannes, Berlin and Venice with various nominations and wins, will give you the opportunity to watch the freshest examples of short films from last year in one sitting.
4. The Short Film Forum, which started off last year to create funding for short films at scenario stage as well as organizing classes for project development, will be holding an exciting scenario competition to look out for.
5. This year, Short to Feature section’s guest will be scenarist, actor and director Onur Saylak. You can catch the screenings of Saylak’s award winning short The Jungle as well as one of last year’s most talked about feature debuts, More. Those who wants to listen to Saylak’s cinema experience from his own words can also attend the scheduled talk session.
6. Experiences, a core section of the festival, will be hosting one of the most important names of Argentina cinema, Ana Katz, as this year’s guest. Katz’s four shorts and award winning full feature, A Stray Girlfriend, which was selected to Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, will be among festival’s not-to-miss screenings this year. For those who are interested to hear more, there will also be a special talk session with Katz herself.
7. The guest of Documentary Cinema section will be the master writer and director Nebil Özgentürk. You can catch two of Özgentürk’s great documentaries, Sorrowful Love Sories and Diary of Immigration to Germany, or attend his talk session and listen to this veteran name’s experiences.
8. Special Screening section will include a selection of important examples from recent period Russian cinema, Sabancı Vakfı Short Film Competition’s award winning films and jazz musician Can Kozlu’s Let Be What Is... Do not miss out!
9. Some of the highly demanded workshops of this year will be from cinematographer Feza Çaldıran, film editor Ali Aga, producer Suzan Güverte, theatre director Çağ Çalışkur and scenario doctor Marietta von Hauswolff von Baumgarten.
10. Some of this year’s interesting talk sessions will come from successful actress Farah Zeynep Abdullah on acting; musician Murat Evgin on the relation between music and image; Anna Katalin Lovrity and Cenk Ertürk on making a short film; director of the short film section of Montpellier Film Festival, Michèle Driguez on short films in the international arena; Nilay Ulusoy, Selahattin Yıldız, Özge Erbek Kara on the relation between cinema education in universities and short film; Ahmet Hızarcı, Cenk Erol and Tuğushan Özdener on post-production process. Make sure you follow 14th Akbank Short Film Festivals for all these talks and more!