Burak Dal

As a Greek tombstone of unknown origin is discovered underneath the floorboards in an old village house in Turkey, an almost forgotten story from the country’s creation unravels; the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. The engraved Cyrillic letters tell of a woman, Chrysoula Rodaki, who died in 1887. And so the search for her descendants begins: It leads director Kerem Soyyilmaz to local archives, where his own family's role in history is laid bare; to abandoned ghost towns and through the memories of older villagers - all while Soyyilmaz meets massive support for his quest from Greeks on the other side of the border. The stone becomes a portal to the past - and for a while, the trauma becomes redeemed when the previous owners of the village house return.

Sait, a man committed to his faith, has turned his back on the material world. This peaceful existence is shattered by a news story he sees on television and a municipal worker who comes knocking on his door in the middle of the night.

Bakur (North) is a documentary that invites its audience to reflect on a war that has been continuing for decades and gives an insightful look on its main subject, the PKK. The film follows the lives of the guerilla in three different camps on the Kurdish region (north) that lies within Turkish borders.

Following the military intervention of 1980 the number of people who died during interrogation or in prison increased. As a result of the unsanitary conditions and torture in prisons, 299 people died while incarcerated.

Year 1969 - in Turkey. 60s youth were living the most excited days. There was a great effort to make a bridge in Istanbul, on the Bosphorus. Meanwhile, on the eastern border of Turkey, in a Kurdish city between the borders of Iran and Iraq that is left to its destiny, in Hakkari, Zap River was taking lives since there were no passage on it.

The documentary Where Are You Going Bro?: The Exchange is about the human tragedy experienced before and after the 1924 Population Exchange. The film draws attention to the traumas which were created by the Exchange and whose effects still continue: Due to an article in the Treaty of Lausanne concerning population exchange hundreds of thousands of people were suddenly banished from their homes and settled in lands that were completely unknown to them without their consent.