Directing
Istanbul famously stands as the bridge between Asia, Africa, and Europe, and it is at this geographical crossroads that three migrant families’ stories intersect. Far from the glorious Ottoman architecture and the glamorous Bosphorous nightlife, In Transit shows the tough life of transients stuck in Istanbul, between their war-torn or impoverished past and their imagined and elusive future. This thoroughly engaging video tracks an Iraqi Arab family, an Iraqi Kurdish family, and a Nigerian couple for a full year, witnessing their struggle to adapt to life on the margins of an unforgiving city while awaiting visas and work permits that never seem to come.
An underdog basketball team under the helm of an idealist school teacher from hard scrabble Diyarbakir in Southeastern Turkey goes beyond winning games in their mission to rise above prejudice, poverty and political turmoil created by the decades long conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish rebels who are fighting for local autonomy and cultural rights.
Hold Still follows two timelines. The first takes place in the present, from 2018, when shooting began, to 2022, when the Dargeçit case ended in acquittal. The second one dates back to October 29, 1995, when eight people disappeared in custody in the Dargeçit district of Mardin, and to 2013, 2014 and 2016, when the bones and clothes of the disappeared people were found in different wells in the region.
Galata Bridge is a world famous bridge in Istanbul. More than 120.000 people cross this bridge every day. The bridge has two floors and is home to many restaurants and shops. For many people the bridge is center of their life. Some even live on the bridge. Planet Galata is a portrait of these people – and a portrait of the bridge.
A feature documentary revealing the search for the fragmented life of filmmaker’s great-grandmother together with her ‘unspeakable’ Armenian origins.
