Istanbul’s International Independent Film Festival is coming to Girne next month.
The festival is set to open on February 26 with the 2015 Patricia Rozema film Into The Forest, which will be screened online in 33 cities and 50 other locations – including at Girne’s Onar Village to reach an audience of some 15,000 simultaneously.
The Canadian film will be screened at 7pm, also kicking off a three-day Sidestreets Offsite programme at the Girne venue.
February 27 will see two screenings, starting at 1pm with Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s 2016 Best
Foreign Language Film Academy Award nominee film Mustang – the moving story of five sisters who choose not to be “women” or “children” in Turkey, but to be themselves.
This will be followed at 4pm by Amber Fares’ Speed Sisters, which tells of the first all-women motor racing team in the Middle East, challenging, with the racing cars they make out of spare parts in the occupied West Bank, both the region’s occupation and its conservative society.
The programme ends on February 28 with two films. Sonita, directed by Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami, the true story of a young Afghan woman who comes to Tehran as a refugee and tries to bear her difficult life through rap music, will be shown at 1pm.
Paradise, directed by Sina Ataeian Dena, tells of a 25-year-old Iranian teacher’s unique resistance against the oppressive regime, taking a documentary-style approach to the difficulties of being a woman in a sexist country. It will screen at 4pm.
All screenings are free but places may be booked in advance by calling 0548 844 5008.
Speed Sisters
