‘GOD IS IN THE HEART OF THOSE WHO LOVE HUMANS’
Neşet Ertaş
In our 5th year, we are excited to host many precious films and their creators from different countries and Turkey at our festival. As a director, I know very well how valuable it is to dare to make a film in recent economic conditions and try to bring it together with the audience. For this reason, I would like to thank all the short filmmakers who sent their films to us for consideration from distant geographies of the world.
A film is born at a festival that it participates in. The directors may carry their film in their wombs for months or years, but it will come before the ears to hear, the eyes to see, and the hearts to comprehend for the first time at a festival. If a film has the opportunity to boom, it will find its first rough face-off with the festival audience. Because to establish a new relationship with a film, festivals give much more than the world we create with the screen in our homes, alone and individually. This relationship, which gives our festival its name, is a kind of ‘friendship.’ This relationship starts with the movie-festival connection and continues with the enrichment of the audience-festival connection. The friendship of a film or festival invites two people to have new and different dreams even after the festival. Having similar attachments with someone else, sharing similar anger with someone else, or seeing differing understandings on the other person’s face and interpreting them from a different perspective transports us to a new realm of truth and friendship.
The place we arrive at the end of the conflicts and prejudices we experience and the conflicts of interest that causes us to condemn the other shows how much we need to listen, see and hear each other. There are still traces of the remedy that will heal the times and the world’s wounds in the voices of poets, musicians, painters, and artistic directors. It is why, despite a thousand and one difficulties, we continue to hold our festival every year and set out with the ‘friendly to art, friendly to truth, friendly to self’ motto.
This year, we dedicated our festival to our great poet Neşet Ertaş, who continued the tradition of Bektashi Dervishes—immigrated to Anatolia through music—and engraved his amity and love on musical notes. We would like to grasp his understanding of friendship and the depth of his art through the festival events.
In addition to the sections of our first four years, this year, we include a documentary competition selection for the first time. One of the films that will compete in our documentary selection titled “Humanitarian Perspective” will receive the “Best Documentary Award” from the Turkish Red Crescent in memory of Emir Abdulkadir. Main competition films will compete for three grand prizes. In addition, we will present the “Fono Film Post-Production Award” for the best Turkish director’s next film and the “Neşet Ertaş Friendship Award” to a film in the Forty-Year-Old Gratitude selection. Next to the screenings, the festival’s valuable guests and artists will be with us with their speeches that will contribute to the development of cinema in seminal panels and interviews.
On behalf of myself and the festival team, while wishing everyone a productive and friendly festival week, I would like to thank all the institutions, sponsors, and friends who have contributed to the actualization of the festival.
Faysal Soysal
Director, 5th International Kızılay Amity Film Festival