The Ankara-based Festival on Wheels, organized by the Ankara Cinema Association with support from the Culture and Tourism Ministry, will roll out its 15th edition from Dec. 4-10 on home ground, from where it will travel to the eastern Black Sea city of Artvin for a week-long run. From there it will head overseas for its final leg, which is scheduled for Dec. 18-20 in Skopje in Macedonia. The festival’s Ankara leg will hold screenings at the Batı Theater. The festival is traveling to Artvin for the first time following a three-year stint in another eastern city, Kars. In Artvin, the winners of the international competition’s gold, silver and bronze Bull Awards will be announced and will receive their prizes at a ceremony on Dec. 16. The Macedonia leg will feature a program of largely Turkish films. “On the Way to School,” Orhan Eskiköy and Özgür Doğan’s best first film award-winning documentary, and “Bornova Bornova,” which brought director İnan Temelkuran the best film prize in Antalya, are among the 10 feature films on this year’s competition lineup, which assembles films from seven countries. The Artvin Municipality will be awarding the best film in the competition with the Golden Bull, which has a cash prize of 10,000 euros, and the second best film with the Silver Bull, worth 5,000 euros. The Turkish Film Critics’ Association (SİYAD) jury will also pick its choice of best film.
Both Turkish entrants in the lineup have already had their Turkish theatrical releases. In “Bornova,” Temelkuran recounts one day in the lives of three unemployed young men in a working class neighborhood in İzmir, while “On the Way to School” follows a primary school teacher trying to teach to a class full of non-Turkish speaking school kids in an ethnically Kurdish village in southeastern Turkey.
Other films in the competition are a South Korean and French co-production “A Brand New Life” by Ounie Lecomte, French movie “Adieu Gary” by Nassim Amaouche, Korean movie “Castaway on the Moon” by Lee Heyjun, Irish movie “Eamon” by Margaret Corkery, a Singaporean and Canadian co-production “Here” by Tzu Nyen Ho, a Chilean, German and French co-production “Huacho” by Alejandro Fernandez Almendras, Rumanian movie “Police, Adjective” by Corneliu Porumboiu and Swedish movie “The Girl” by Fredrik Edfelt.
Alongside the international competition, festival-goers will get to sample a selection of the latest fare from Turkey. The cast and crew of films screened in the Turkish Cinema 2009 section will be there to meet audiences in both Ankara and Artvin. Another, perhaps more challenging, part of the festival lineup is the “Anti” section. The films featured in this program reflect on the latest economic, political, social and cultural developments sweeping both Turkey and the rest of the world in their respective stances against capitalism, war, the middle class, nationalism, militarism, sexism and authoritarianism. A panel discussion will also be held as a sidebar to the “Anti” section. Films in the section include “The Yes Men,” by Chris Smith, Dan Ollman and Sarah Price, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” by Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, “Prison Nr. 5,” by Çayan Demirel; Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Silence de la Mer,” “Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie,” by Luis Buñuel, Jean Vigo’s “Zéro de Conduite,” “Sitcom,” by François Ozon, and Ken Loach’s “Bread and Roses.”
Another program on the lineup, “Germany 30 Years Before & 30 Years On,” features two films that take up the political and social problems facing Germany in the 1970s and 2000s; “Deutschland im Herbst” (Germany in Autumn) and “Deutschland 09” (Germany 09). This year’s Short is Good, a regular part of the Festival on Wheels program, will again feature innovative shorts from various countries with a special focus on shorts from Brazil.
For more information on the festival and full program, visit the festival’s Web site at www.festivalonwheels.org.
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