Turkish Cinema Newsletter: Cinema Jazireh by Gözde Kural

Gözde Kural's second feature film, following her debut feature "Toz" (2016). The film premiered at the 32nd International Golden Boll Film Festival in Türkiye. It was one of the most anticipated films of the festival.

Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism withdrew its support for Gözde Kural’s drama “Cinema Jazireh” after watching it.

“We fought this decision, but they rejected it. I couldn’t believe it. It’s not even about Turkey, but apparently there were still things they didn’t want to see,” the Turkish director tells Variety.

Director, Writer: Gözde Kural [1]

Cast: Reza Akhlaghirad, Meysam Damanzeh, Fereshteh Hosseini

Sound: Alireza Alavian

DOP : Adib Sobhani

Assistant Director : Beran Soysal

Editors : Gözde Kural, Bünyamin Bayansal

Colorist : Laurent Morel

Costume Designer : Ezgi Karayel

Production Designer : Babak Tahmili

Cast: Fereshteh Hosseini, Mazlum Sümer, Ali Karimi, Hamid Karimi, Meysam Demanze, Reza Akhlagrad

Producers:

Gözde Kural / Toz Film Production

Milad Khosravi / Seven Springs Pictures

Bulut Reyhanoğlu / KosKos Film

Co-production:

Svetla Tsotsorkova / FrontFilm

Andreea Dumitrescu / AVVA MIXX Studios

Bünyamin Bayansal, Emre Pekçakır / Soberworks

World sales and festival handling:

Seven Springs Pictures

Seven Springs Pictures is a film production and distribution company founded by Milad Khosravi in 2020 and based in Tehran. The company is passionate about creating compelling arthouse and cinematic films from Iran and the broader Middle East. The name was inspired by Seven Springs, a cherished fountain in Iran’s Bakhtiari region, where many inspiring films were born from there.

After surviving her family's massacre, Leila has a goal: to find her son Omid. But in Afghanistan, being woman means being less than nothing. She chooses to change her identity and sets a path where the slightest hesitation can mean death.

In the grip of the Taliban’s oppression rule “Cinema Jazireh” is a poignant drama set in Afghanistan. Leyla disguises herself as a man to search for her missing son, Omid. Leyla’s journey intertwines with Azad, an orphan boy trapped in a creepy world of child abuse called “Bache Bazi”. As they confront unimaginable hardship, they discover the enduring power of resistance and whispers of hope that refuse to be silenced.

[1] Gözde Kural was born in 1987 in Ankara. After receiving her education in Advertising and Film TV, she started her career as an assistant director, directing various videos and TVCs.

She studied Film Production at Istanbul Bilgi University and began her career as an assistant director before transitioning into writing, directing, and producing her own work.

She has directed three short films and made her feature directorial debut with Dust (2015), a drama shot in Afghanistan. The film screened at numerous international film festivals, including the Montreal World Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival, and Mumbai International Film Festival. Dust received critical acclaim and won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival in 2016.

FILMOGRAPHY

Cinema Jazireh /2024/ Post-production/ / Writer, Director, Producer / Feature fiction film

Dust / 2016 / Feature Fiction Film / Writer and Director / Shanghai IFF, Antalya IFF, Mumbai IFF

Taking place in Afghanistan, which seems to have normalized after the war but is still seething under the surface, Toz is based on the emergence of secrets from a family’s past one by one. Azra, Emir and Ahmet are three Afghan siblings born and raised in Istanbul. After their mother’s death, Azra sets off to find out why she inherited a house in Afghanistan, to see the house and to really get to know her family. She ignores her brother Emir’s concerns and goes to her uncle, who refuses to tell her anything. Her uncle is uncomfortable with her even going out alone and is rude to his wife and daughter. Azra gets close to a handsome and polite café owner whom she meets by chance and tries to reach her relatives, whose existence she has just learned about, through this man. ×

The Neighbourhood / 2018 / Feature Documentary / Producer

INTERVIEW

Kural, in his own words, examines Afghanistan, which he sees as the end of the world, and Turkey's current grim situation. In doing so, he explores compelling topics ranging from the relationship between women and men to homosexuality, from Taliban oppression to the "baça bazi" tradition of child abuse and exploitation, a practice seen in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The film won the "most promising actor award" at the Golden Boll and has now won the "best director award" at the 40th Mostra de Valencia Film Festival.

We spoke with Kural about "Cinema Jazireh."

'THE END OF THE WORLD'

- Your first feature film, "Dust," was also a story about Afghanistan, and so is this film. Why Afghanistan?

I went to Afghanistan at a very young age, right after graduating. It was a place I went to understand the world, with the feeling of, "What's happening here? What's happening? I need to see." Then I said, "Let me make a film here." I also had some questions about life: Where do we live? Where is this world? It can't just be here. Afghanistan taught me a lot at that point. Because it truly is the end of the world. And it's a country that's so easily ignored. I returned. This time, it started asking me questions. At the same time, the world wasn't going anywhere good.

So I tried to tell this story through Afghanistan, but of course, the film isn't just about Afghanistan. It's a film that says something to us, too: to those above us, below us, and even further away.

- The film begins with a mother searching for her son. We say we'll be watching Leyla, and the story of a mother searching for her son entirely. But then the frame suddenly shifts to "bacha bazi." How did you go about implementing this transition?

I had both stories in mind from the very beginning. Only the "Cinema Jazireh" section came in much later.

In the final stages, I decided it would make more sense for the two sections of the script to run parallel. Where is this place? Because it's nowhere, really. A ghost town. At first, we understand where we are. A colorless world, no children, no women. Then suddenly, we enter another world, a vibrant one. It's so much fun. There's music, there's cinema, but it hides very interesting realities behind it.

'SHE SHOULD FIND HER WAY ALONE'

- We're actually watching two different genders experience the anxiety of motherhood. One is Leyla, the other Zabur. How did you establish Zabur's motherhood?

Zabur is a story in itself... I generally find the emotions of the characters first. Zabur's emotion was the weight of being unwanted, and I'll say it again: I was also deeply affected by the place I live in.

Because here, Zabur is also this person: She's the woman who suffered years of violence from her husband but can't seem to leave that house. Or she's the son who's constantly being abused. Therefore, she's a very complex character who encompasses all of them, and this motherhood is something she takes on. Whether she wants it or not, she's the one who manages things, thinking things will go wrong if I'm not here, etc., and trying to fill that gap, but she can't quite manage it. She's a complex character, in a very in-between, very gray area. Leyla, on the other hand, is more straightforward, has a clear goal, and doesn't get too confused. Therefore, her change isn't a character change. It's a decision-making shift.

- It's actually one of the most important parts of the film: There's a man keeping Leyla alive, and we never saw him again. I wonder if we would have?

Sencer. Zabur and Sencer were the two characters I pondered the most. After a certain point, the tension escalates so much that I didn't want to turn Leyla back into a man, frankly. I mean, I want that woman to find her own path. "Leave her alone," I said. "Gözde," because she did what she had to do.

And most importantly, I wanted to convey, "Look, not every man is like this. Not everyone who lives here is like this. We're not monsters." I believe we walk on equal paths. Besides, even the worst are not that bad. This is not something I can ever justify, but we have to understand each other. Because our first inclination is to fight and struggle against the criminal himself, but if we want to end this, we have to fight crime. Therefore, nothing in life is that black and white. We all have gray areas.

- What if we ask how much of what we watch is real and how much is fiction?

Unfortunately, it's all true. I'm deeply saddened to say this. Even I get goosebumps during some scenes in the film, thinking, "It's not like that, but what if it was?" "Oh my! What if it happened!" But it happened somewhere. Cinema Jazireh is a metaphorical place. There's no such place, but Cinema Jazireh is everywhere. In the Netherlands, in Türkiye, in Syria, in Russia, Cinema Jazireh is everywhere, in different forms.

"WE SHOULD NOT LOSE OUR DIGNITY AND FREEDOM TO HOPE"

- The Taliban, the concept of sharia, the state of motherhood... In your interview, you said, "The end of the world is Afghanistan, and I tried to look at Türkiye from the perspective of the end of the world." I'd like you to elaborate on this a bit.

These things you just mentioned... Am I a good mother? Am I a woman? Do I like men? These are secondary questions in life. First, shelter... You need shelter. Then you need to be fed. While the primary problems haven't been resolved, there's no platform to discuss them there. We can discuss them here. Because we still have the capacity to create such spaces. But we're losing ground. As they say, "That won't be enough," "This won't work either," it happens, and that happens too. No one got anywhere overnight. First, ideas were destroyed. Then they spoke out. And then it was put into action. I'd like to say, "Don't come here. This is not a good place." If my country were a person, I would want to shake it and say, "Don't go. Turn around. Turn around now, or it's no good."

I dedicated the hope in this film to hope because I saw the despair in the eyes of the people in my country. Because no, we cannot lose it. In these dark times, we have two things: our dignity and our freedom to hope. We cannot lose these two. It's impossible.

-So what should we do?

First, we must urgently look at each other. And we must hold on to what unites us, not what divides us. Because the other side is busy emptying the very concept that unites us. No. We will hold on to these things. We will hold on to them without turning up our noses. We must stand together. One of us may have a crooked eye, the other may be a mess. It doesn't matter. We'll talk about that later. But we must urgently hold on to what unites us.