Tales from Kars

A young poet named Lal (32) spends his endless days alone with his thoughts inside his small prison cell. A sparrow, not certain if its real or if its a product of his imagination, suddenly appears inside his cell. This sparrow flying frantically while looking for an escape, pushes Lal to go on a personal journey caught in between reality and a dream. As the poet returns to the streets of the city of his childhood, he will find time frozen, his memories destroyed and his people scattered.

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.

Arrested while a student in university, Yusuf is released from prison after ten years. He returns home and is welcomed by his sick and elderly mother. Soon he will meet Eka, a beautiful Georgian girl who is a sex worker, and love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and elude loneliness.

Ishak, a wandering musician from a small mountain town. A lynching he was a part of 7 years ago comes back to haunt him as he returns to his town to say farewell to his dying mother. Facing the other five perpetrators--his childhood friends—as well as the community and government officials supporting them, Ishak struggles with the guilt weighing upon him. However, the bigger the crime is, the stronger the silence gets since everyone has blood on their hands.

At the times of World War II, accomplished painter and translator Aram flees Istanbul due to political offenses. When he is trapped at the USSR-Georgia borders, his flight turns into a remembrance of things past...

Saroyanland is a docu-drama focusing on the journey of famous writer William Saroyan to the birthplace of his Armenian family Bitlis, in Turkey in 1964. While retaking the same road, the film aims to understand Saroyan's unique attitude to belonging, witnessing the self-discovery of a man who followed the traces of his Armenian ancestors.

One day waves bring a wooden statue of Lenin to a small town by the Black Sea. The statue is erected in the town square by the Municipality with the hope that it would attract tourists to the town. As an official opening ceremony is planned with the participation of the Prime Minister and a Russian delegation, the statue gets stolen. Two police investigators from Ankara are assigned to find Lenin in twelve hours. Townspeople give an unexpected answer to the question «Where is Lenin?».

Ferhat (49), a factory manager in Istanbul, and Handan (45), a bank manager, decide to have a child through surrogacy with Lia (28), a young artist of Georgian and Ukrainian descent. Shortly after their daughter Ada (1) is born, war breaks out between Russia and Ukraine. As a result, Lia is forced to stay in Istanbul with Ferhat and Handan for a while longer. Believing that surrogacy is the formula that will take her to Europe, Lia does not want to leave Ada.

An unexpected reunion between a traveling musician and his son opens old wounds as the two set out on a long journey to a troubadour festival.

The documentary shot in a Laz village called M3’anu is about the lives of women living in the region. The documentary focuses on women who have a great endurance without being crushed under the heavy load they carry on their backs, the difficulties of living conditions and the heavy load brought by taking care of their families, nevertheless, they do not give up their songs and smile on their faces.

Yusuf, 12, lives in the Digor district of Kars and goes to school every day by bicycle. Although it takes a long time, this trip gives him the opportunity to see Leyla, a girl he particularly likes, for a brief moment each morning.

Tuncel Kurtiz is an international actor who has worked in various countries such as Turkey, Germany, and Sweden throughout his fifty-year career. He has starred in countless works in cinema, stage and television and has received many awards, including the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. He has directed two documentaries and a feature-length fiction film. Kurtiz's acting performance ranges from popular melodramas to major plays such as Mahabharata (Peter Brook), encompassing many different genres and styles. As an actor, Kurtiz believes in the creative power of chaos: 'Chaos is the most difficult to create / Not a false chaos / Many things come out of chaos'. Through testimonies, film excerpts, and archive footage, this documentary reflects Tuncel Kurtiz's diverse body of artistic work in all its dimensions for the first time. In the background of this detailed portrait are Turkey's turbulent years and the reality of exile.

Sumru, a young ethnomusicologist in search of her lost lover, leaves Istanbul for a three-month research project in Diyarbakır. While crossing paths with locals and tracing the pains of others through a music project based on Anatolian mournings, she comes to confront the remnants of her own agony.

The countenance of Joseba Sarrionandia is multi-faceted, not only for having dabbled in all literary forms of expression, but for having been capable of creating his own imagery, composed of endless worlds. Thus, several of the elements appearing in the literary world will undoubtedly appear here: the sea, the port, childhood, trains, uprooting, war, destruction, love, drifting, pain, fantasy, mystery, initiation, torture...