Hello,

Our international film festival which has pioneered in contributing and leading the founding of consecutive festivals here in Turkey, is celebrating its 27th year this year. As the Flying Broom Foundation, we are very aware of the current climate of gender equality and the lack thereof, in almost every industry around the globe. Women around the world have been fighting to be seen, be heard and to have equal rights for centuries and moreso today. Today this battle is unfortunately still on a very thin and sensitive foundation, despite all effort to make it whole and grounded. For this exact reason, our festival theme for the past two years has been “More, Not Less”. We wanted to support and emphasize women’s effort, signature and exposure in film. We believe that our power comes from collaboration and in togetherness in this journey for women in film. This year we are incredibly excited to house our festival in a very historically and culturally precious location. A movie theatre in the heart of Ankara which has been closed for many years have opened its doors for us, The Kavaklıdere Sinema. We couldn’t have done this without our young generation who wanted to carry on the culture of cinema and the support of the NGO’s working at the Kavaklıdere Foundation. Our goal is to strengthen our connections with organizations in this industry on a global level. This year, we have cast special attention to embedding meetings and talkbacks in the festival around the topics of what more should be done in the industry. We are stronger and even more interlaced this year. Lately, not only the number of female producers, directors and actors have started to increase in our country these creatives have also excelled in being heads of significant foundations. The expansion in numbers of women in charge have also been seen in the recent mayoral elections. We as the Flying Broom Foundation have entered a new structure. Our board of trustees has grown in numbers and we have formed our new advisory board. This year we were especially thrilled during the selection process of films and the forming of our program, as nearly all of the films in our film pool ended up winning awards. The underbelly theme of our festival this year is the verse “Your Remember The Flight” from Iranian poet Füruğ Ferruhzad. We have arrived to today, now it’s time to reunite.

Enjoy the films!