Saturday, April 14

Fragments from “National Documentary Competition” within “Turkish Cinema” was screened at Pera Museum Auditorium. After the screening, the director Rojda Akbayır answered the questions from the audience: “I had the idea of making a film about September 12 (the coup d’état in 1980). My father was affected by it so the documentary became the story of my own family. It’s been a tough journey. It was hard to face the family secrets, so I’ve had some really depressing periods. This documentary was a journey toward my father. (…) We were very lucky because our team was really good and everyone believed in this project. I’ve watched a ton of documentary films because I worked at the Documentary Filmmakers Association for 10 years, so that helped. Here we drew heavily on the question of ‘how a nostalgic story can be turned into a universal one?’”

Photo: Ersin Durmuş