The Town That Drove Away : «We witnessed how urbanisation became a façade»
INTERVIEW: Filmmakers Grzegorz Piekarski and Natalia Pietsch explore Turkey’s cultural erasure through the transformation of historic Hasankeyf into underwater tourism.
Istanbul
Pragmatism and repressive politics
TURKEY: This autumn, we met two intellectuals in Istanbul about today’s Turkey – and attended a major conference there on political economy. Here, we look at the use of power, freedom of expression, the media, militarisation and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s political pragmatism.
«It’s not about becoming bigger; it’s about creating connections»
BIFED: Ahead of its 11th edition, Modern Times Review spoke with Festival Coordinator Ethem Özgüven and Festival Director Petra Holzer on the festival’s origins, mission, and the challenges and opportunities ecological documentary filmmakers face today.
A symphony of human resilience
CHINA: Contrasting cultural richness with harsh realities under China’s systematic campaign.
A world not just of facts, but of possibilities
IDENTITY: Özge Baykan Calafato has collected a fascinating photo archive in the markets of antiquities and rarities of Istanbul. Through a selection of these photographs, she analyses the relation between population and state ideology during the emergence of the secular Turkish republic in the 1920s and 1930s
A mosque shared by all
ISLAN: Female imam Seyran Ateş believes Islam needs a sexual revolution, resulting in Fatwas, bullets, death threats, and police protection.
The psychological toll of deportation
MIGRANTS: Three Swiss deportees of Turkish descent must find their way in a land that is no longer home.
Death in Istanbul
CONTROL: In October 2018, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and never came out, leaving his fiancée and an international community of dissidents to piece together clues to his murder.