The movie theater in Istanbul Modern's new museum building, which bears the signature of Renzo Piano, is opening with the program called Forms of Forgetting, which will take place between 8-18 June. The 11-film program takes its name from director Burak Çevik's new film, Ways of Forgetting, which had its world premiere at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival. Çevik's film is screened for the first time in Turkey at Istanbul Modern Cinema.
Istanbul Modern Cinema continues to prepare original screening programs and events in its new venue with the contributions of Türk Tuborg A.Ş. The new 156-seat movie theater in Istanbul Modern's new museum building offers a high-quality viewing experience with its 4K-supported state-of-the-art digital display system and silver screen.
14 years will wait
Istanbul Modern Cinema's opening program takes its name from director Burak Çevik's new film, Forms of Forgetting, which had its world premiere at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival and follows the process of remembering the past of a couple who are reunited after 14 years of separation. After the international screenings, the film will be screened for the first time in Turkey at Istanbul Modern with the participation of Burak Çevik on June 17 and will then be hidden at Istanbul Modern for 14 years. The film, which will not be screened in Turkey again during this time, will thus turn into an experience of how memory is layered and rewritten, similar to its subject matter.
8 movies showing for the first time
In addition to Çevik's film, the selection includes 8 films that were screened for the first time in Turkey. Featured films in the selection include Cafer Panahi's latest film, No Bear, and Laura Poitras' All the Pains and Beauties of Life, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Cinema tickets are free on Thursdays and 80 TL on other days. It is free for Istanbul Modern members.
WAYS OF FORGETTING, 2023
June 17, 17.00
Director: Burak Cevik
Cast: Nesrin Uçarlar, Erdem Şenocak
The couple Erdem (Senocak) and Nesrin (Uçars) come together 14 years after their separation and try to remember their relationship and why they ended it. Throughout the film, the dreams they remember today and the dreams they said or even saw in the past are intertwined. Meanwhile, the director is trying to remember something else through the memories of the places he recorded with the images in his own chamber. He wants to find something he lost in the movie by looking at the remains of an abandoned building, or through a hole in the middle of a frozen lake, maybe even scanning a dark room with a flashlight. Agile produces an abstract and nostalgic feeling by using the creative power of forgetting, while at the same time trying to understand the cinema itself in a deep place.
NO BEAR, 2022
10 June 17.00, 15 June 15.00
Director: Jafar Panahi
Cast: Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Mina Kavani
Cafer Panahi's latest film, which will meet with the audience for the first time in Turkey, is another example of meta cinema about his prison situation. The desire of a director who is forbidden to leave his country and work despite everything, and his effort to produce images and stories… Panahi, who lives in a border village, tries to direct the love story of an Iranian exile couple living on the Turkish-Iran border by giving remote commands with his computer and phone. At the same time, he finds himself involved in the internal affairs of the village because of a photograph he did not actually take. Through these two parallel narratives, he looks at the small hypocrisy and great injustices of his people, of course questioning the moral and power limits of his own creative process. A film from Panahi, caught between the habit of filming life and the inability to leave his country, as political as it is personal, and a gripping film as always.
ALL THE PAINS AND BEAUTY OF LIFE, 2022
8 June 17.00; 11 June 17.00
Director: Laura Poitras
Academy Award winner Laura Poitras takes Nan Goldin, one of the cult photographers of the art world, on a journey through photographs and gives a lesson on how art can be a political intervention. The film, which won the Golden Lion award from the Venice Film Festival, weaves two different stories together with incredible authenticity: Goldin's traumatic family history, the friendships he made in New York, his career as one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, and Goldin's founder. His actions in major art museums with the activist group PAIN. These actions are against the Sackler family, the giant pharmaceutical company responsible for the opioid epidemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the USA. The documentary touches the audience with its emotional story while giving hope about the power of art.
ANHELL69, 2022
10 June 13.00; 16 June 13.00
Director: Theo Montoya
Cast: Camilo Najar, Sergio Pérez, Juan Pérez
The film chronicles a young, queer generation struggling with suicide and drugs in Medellín, known as Pablo Escobar's drug cartel and Colombia's "open wound". We see Montoya in the pre-shooting of his first movie, a dystopian B-movie starring ghosts. The name “Anhell69” comes from the director's Instagram account of 21-year-old lead actor Camilo Najar, who died of a heroin overdose. Unfortunately, like many of the director's friends, he dies before filming. Anhell69 is a dark exploration of “a nation that kills its children,” but it is also a trance film: not just because it's about trans people, but because it crosses the lines between documentary and fiction. It is an inspiring cinematic action with its neo-noir and gothic aesthetics, hard political attitude, deep emotion and every moment.
STONE TURTLE, 2022
8 June 15.00; 11 June 13.00
Director: Ming Jin Woo
Cast: Asmara Abigail, Bront Palarae, Amerul Affendi
Woo Jing Min's film, in which folk tales and speculative futures intertwine, is a revenge story set on a deserted and beautiful island. After her sister is killed in an honor killing, Zahara is forced to take responsibility for her ten-year-old niece, Nika. Determined to enroll Nika in a school on the mainland, Zahara makes a living from the illegal turtle egg trade. When a strange visitor named Samad arrives on the island, Zahara in a frenzy of deja vu decides to take revenge on him. Referred to as “Malaysia's Groundhog Day”, the film is a unique and magical film, using different media such as comics and animation, playing with genre and narrative expectations, putting the audience in a strange whirlwind of emotions.
ETERNAL SECRET, 2022
8 June 13.00, 10 June 15.00
Director: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Carly-Sophia Davies, August Joshi
British director Joanna Hogg tells the story of a mother-daughter relationship in the third movie of the "Souvenir" series. To celebrate her mother Rosalind's birthday, 50-year-old Julie takes her on a short vacation to a splendid but secluded hotel in Wales. While Julie tries to make a movie about her mother, we watch them choose food in the hotel restaurant or take their dog for a walk. This story, which gives the indescribable love between mother and daughter, but also the insurmountable difference of character and view, makes the perception of time and space of the film mysterious as it unfolds. A kind of ghost movie, The Endless Secret stars Tilda Swinton as the mother and daughter, who hypnotizes her by switching from one character to another with a tremendous acrobatics at every moment of the movie.
SISI & I, 2022
16 June 16.00; 18 June 17.15
Director: Frauke Finsterwalder
Cast: Sandra Hüller, Angela Winkler, Tom Rhys Harries
Empress Elisabeth of Austria continues to inspire European screens as a feminist icon, even 125 years after the execution of Sisi. Unlike his other examples, this movie focuses on Sisi's right-hand man, Irma (Sandra Hüller), who is her head maid. An eccentric character, Irma accompanies Sisi for the last four years of her life, and their strange romantic relationship leads to an increasingly complex end. The film, which sometimes turns into a black comedy, celebrates the power of women by combining different eras of history, especially with the pop songs of the 1990s with female vocals and the clever and colorful designs of costume designer Tanja Hausner.
PLAN 75, 2022
17 June 15.00; 18 June 15.00
Director: Chie Hayakawa
Cast: Hayato Isomura, Stefanie Arianne, Chieko Baisho
This strange and melancholic film, which won the Special Golden Camera Award at the Cannes Film Festival last year, is set in the near future. To "clean up" the growing elderly population a bit, the Japanese government is preparing a special program for citizens over 75 to end their lives with logistical support and $1000 in monetary support. While Michi is healthy and living on his own, one day he loses his job, and this state-sponsored suicide program is forced into Plan 75. Mich, civil servant Hiromu, and young Filipino nurse Maria, this drama is not cynical or dystopian, but offers a modest premise about euthanasia.
BACK TO Seoul, 2022
15 June 17.00; 18 June 15.00
Director: Davy Chou
Cast: Park Ji-min, Oh Kwang-rok, Kim Sun-young
25-year-old Freddie hastily decides to visit his friends in Seoul, his hometown, before he was adopted and raised in France. This first visit will be the beginning of an eight-year journey to discover his biological parents. This bittersweet drama, which deals with the family and the disappointments it brings through Freddie, who is trying to understand his identity and find himself, who is stuck between the cultures of Korea and France, is Davy Chou's first film. The cast, mostly amateurs, draws attention with its gripping narration and the realistic play of its main character, Park Ji-min.
FACE OF JELLYHOOD, 2022
11 June 15.00; 16 June 14.30
Director: Melisa Liebenthal
Cast: Rocío Stellato, Vladimir Duran, Federico Sack
When Marina, a 30-year-old teacher, wakes up one morning, she notices that her face has changed. She does not recognize herself in the mirror, even her mother looks at her as if greeting a stranger on the street and passes by. Marina tries to learn the truth about herself after this secret. The film depicts this terrifying situation as an existential anxiety, not from a dark place, but by following Marina's daily life. Argentine director Melisa Liebenthal's film offers the actress a sardonic examination of how who we are and how we look, while also questioning man's place in the animal kingdom.
SORRY Comrade, 2022
15 June 13.00; 17 June 13.00
Director: Vera Bruckner
Germany, 1970. Falling in love at first sight, two students, Karl-Heinz and Hedi, try to find a way to be together from beyond the Iron Curtain. Under pressure from the DDR secret police, Karl-Heinz cannot move to East Germany and Hedi is eventually forced to leave the country. His escape disguised as a vacation trip to Romania goes awry in many ways. It is a fast and energetic film that plays with the codes of the documentary, with its vibrantly colored sets and music, animations and rich archive imagery. This crazy love story that crosses all kinds of walls is both a bit of escape drama and a warm, emotional slice of the history of divided cold Germany, away from the rhetoric of “gray East, golden West”.