Saturday, April 7

Meetings on the Bridge started on the first day of the festival with the first of the events “Series Becoming Digital 2”.

Following the screening of the first episode, “Great Sins” of the series 7 Faces, the panel titled “The Story of Creation and Production” with the participation of one of the directors and writer of the series, Tunç Şahin, the producer, Cihan Aslı Filiz, and the content manager of BluTV, Sarp Kalfaoğlu.

Kalfaoğlu said that they are looking to create the kind of works that the audience don’t get the opportunity to see on free TV both in terms of narration and content, and said that the 7 Faces project was inspired by Tunç Şahin’s short film Just One Single Day.

“We got lucky because BluTV was looking for an original narrative that we’re not used to seeing in free TV.”

Director Şahin pointed out that it requires creating a challenging structure to bring together under an umbrella theme all the episodes of a series consisting of seven independent stories, and added, however, that forming separate teams made it possible to complete the project in its due time. It was also mentioned that directors Umut Aral, Alphan Eşeli and Ceylan Özgün Özçelik contributed an episode each to the series.

“With these seven episodes that didn’t have any tonal or formal coherence, and thanks to the freedom that BluTV allowed us, we were able to experiment with different rhythms in montage and to give enough space to my fellow directors for their directorial choices. During the creation process, they [BluTV] understood our choices and we were being open to their expectations as a platform.”

Film critic Ayça Çiftçi highlighted the fact that in a world where the hierarchical line between cinema and TV is becoming increasingly blurry, BluTV is doing a highly important job with 7 Faces by presenting us with urban, middle-class portraits from today’s Turkey, stories that we don’t come across very often in free TV. Çiftçi added that it is important to see this global transformation in Turkey as well.

Kalfaoğlu shared that they are planning to shoot a second season, and explained that such original and creative works find their audience in Turkey, and that 7 Faces also drew great interest from Europe because of its story and technique.

Photo: Umay Işık