News

Politics and film festivals tend to intersect as the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival emphatically attests.

In the lead up to Turkish municipal elections held in March of 2019 the current Mayor of Antalya, Muhittin Böcek, promised voters that, if he won, he would change back the format of the storied film festival held in the resort city on the country’s Southern coast.

At that time within Turkey’s film community the fate of the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, which started in 1964, had become “not (just) the talk of the town; but the talk of the country,” says Turkish film industry veteran Ahmet Boyacıoğlu, who now heads the event in tandem with its artistic director Basak Emre. They were appointed by Böcek.

That’s because the previous two years had seen the local film industry increasingly boycott the Antalya fest, which had been radically reshaped under the previous politically-appointed management,...

Orçun Benli is one of the young directors working within Turkey who has chosen to venture into horror -creating a unique film which instead of the Islamic horror which most of the genre within the country has been steadily mining turns its gaze to a classic figure within Turkish myth and literature, the Gulyabani, with the trailer for the film going live last week.The Gulyabani is a form of demon primarily depicted as a long-bearded giant with a walking stick who terrorizes travelers and those on the road, though different accounts also have the creature describes as a woman or  one whose entire body is covered in hairs and giving off an horrific smell.This figure has been covered within Turkish literature by author Resat Nuri...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Dear women of Turkey, or at least women of Orçun Benli's Gulyabani: If you happen to find yourself alone in the remote woods when you stumble upon a sealed well in the middle of nowhere, just leave it sealed. Don't open it. That's a bad idea .... oh, too late.Yes, the basic premise of Benli's upcoming Turkish horror film is a familiar one, for the most part, but 'cabin in the woods' movies keep popping up because they keep proving popular and while I don't know if I'd enjoy the trailer for Benli's offering nearly as much if I could understand what they're actually saying, well, it's a whole lot of fun this way thanks to its weirdly cartoonish villain, massively camp fortune teller, a...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...