Blog: Film festivals

We are glad to inform you that 1st International Migration Film Festival will be held between the dates of 18th and 22nd of April 2020 in Gaziantep; an ancient city in Eastern Anatolia, famous with touristic sites such as Zeugma Mosaic Museum that is one of the most important mosaic museums in the world; Bakırcılar Çarşısı / Coppersmith Bazaar; Naib Hammam; Mevlevihane which is a dervish lodge next the a historical mosque, and also being one of the only eight creative gastronomy cities of UNESCO in the world.

The festival, which is planned to be traditional and repeat in a different city every year, is held by General Directorate of Migration Management under the auspices of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey and is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. In this first year in Gaziantep, UNICEF also will be part of the organization, holding and awarding an international short film competition during the event.

International Migration Film Festival will mainly focus on films with themes on immigration, immigrants, refugees and cultural impacts of immigration, and plan to host over 500 guests both from Turkey and all over the world, including not only well-known filmmakers, journalists, actors but also representatives from government agencies and NGOs who work with refugees and immigrants in Turkey. The festival aims to draw attention to and raise awareness about refugees in Turkey of whom the numbers are increasing daily, and to create sympathy and understanding towards them via cinema.

Hosting 3,6 million Syrian refugees -about 60% of the whole- Turkey has the largest refugee community in the world and only 3% of them live in detention camps. Although Syrian refugees have overcome lots of initial troubles and settled down here in Turkey since 2011 when they first started to arrive, the cultural impacts of the arrival of are still visible

Festival will bring together the audience with the most qualified productions throughout the world and also, besides the competition excitement in Gaziantep, there will be a full cinema week with many events. During the festival, panel discussions, exhibitions, workshops -both on cinema and immigration / refugee subjects- and concerts will take place in addition to the film screenings.