The Last Season: Shawaks

The Storm

Cemal comes to Istanbul from a small Kurdish town after finishing high-school to pursue higher education. He feels isolated and out of place in the crowded city and soon meets a group Kurdish students who are against the repressive Turkish political system.

The Land

Revolving around an old man who refuses to leave his otherwise evacuated village in Kurdish Turkey, "Ax (The Land)" is a twenty-seven-minute long short film about the forced deportations of Kurdish villages by the Turkish military.

The Life of a Snowflake

In Trabzon, snow falls heavily like never before in the last days of autumn, and the roads are blocked. In this setting, two people who attend the same school but have never met have a chance encounter at a bus station, waiting for the same bus that has run late. They fall in love at first sight.

The Photograph

Faruk and Ali meet on a bus. They are about the same age but they are on their way to opposite destinations. Faruk is going to do his military service in the Turkish army while Ali is on his way to the mountains to join the Kurdish rebels. Hiding each other the reason of their journey, during their journey, a genuine friendship develops between them. Several months later they "will meet again", but in the front line.

Zer

Zer is the story of a song, whispered to Jan's ear on his grandmother's deathbed. A survivor of Dersim Massacre, Zarife hid her identity, her past in her memory of this song. Raised in NYC, Jan begins a journey through Kurdistan, searching for his grandma's past and his own self.

Oy'una Geldik

In the town of Ovacık, where the overwhelming majority are leftists, left-wing candidates and parties are unable to reach an agreement and end up running multiple candidates in the election, resulting in a right-wing candidate winning the mayoral election and attempting to govern the district for five years. Hıdır Diri, who wants to win the new election, mobilizes all his power to win the election through various schemes, including having his ultra-leftist nephew Şilan imprisoned so that he cannot run as a rival. A few days before the election, Şilan is released from prison and hitchhikes with a director, through whose eyes we see the workings of municipalities in Turkey, power relations, rent disputes, and how a people's vote is swayed in a colorful town like Ovacık, all told with a humorous tone.

Journey to the Sun

Mehmet, a young Turkish man newly migrated from Tire, takes a job searching for water leaks below the surface of the streets of Istanbul. Due to a strange set of events, he is mistaken for a Kurd, imprisoned, and brutally beaten. Upon his release, he becomes an outcast marked as a Kurd.

Mother Elif

Mother Elif is known to be philanthropic and wise. She shares deep spiritual values such as love, peace, equality, sharing, tolerance, and compassion with all life she comes into contact with. This film shows her eventful life.

The White Sycamore

The White Sycamore is a documentary that has a cultural aspect focusing on 'Zeynel Dede' (Zeynel Kahraman) who lives in a mountain village in Hozat/Dersim (a Kurdish city in the East part of Turkey), an extraordinary person, a master of music, instruments, lyric writing, stone masonry, wood shaping, animal breeding, beekeeping and also focusing on his very much talented children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Dûr

A film about the remaining people of a remote village in North Kurdistan. Journey with Kazim Öz as he revisits his hometown with a new sense of self. It was by the end of 1997 when Kazim Öz re-visited his village after many years. No one remained except for a few elderly people reflecting on their loneliness, the many years etched on their faces. They had been abandoned. Every inch of earth, imbued with memories, every trace of the former lively atmosphere of life was gone.

Once Upon a Time

Every year, a Kurdish family leaves Gaziantep (Anatolia) to work on the land near Ankara. This thankless life of seasonal labor turns upside down when the eldest son falls in love.