Ghosts wins jury award at Warsaw Film Fest

Mavi Boncuk | 

Ghosts wins jury award at Warsaw Film Fest

Turkish film Ghosts (Hayaletler) has won the Young FIPRESCI Jury award at the 36th Warsaw Film Festival.

Ghosts, Turkey is undergoing a single day of a major power outage that occurred throughout the country. On the day of the power outage, the paths of Didem, who wants to be a hip hop dancer, İffet, who works as a cleaning officer in the municipality, Raşit, who is an opportunist of urban transformation, and Ela, who gives volunteer film lessons to the children of the neighborhood, cross.

The film paints a portrait of urban transformation and dystopic newly configured Istanbul in Turkey today through the axis intersecting stories of these four characters come together. Written and directed by Azra Deniz Okyay; There are actors like Nalan Kuruçim, Beril Kayar, Emrah Özdemir and Dilayda Güneş.

It has gained both local and international appreciation.

The debut feature won a €5,000 ($5,917) critics' Grand Prize at the 77th Venice Film Festival, and five awards at the 57th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.

Known for his short films such as Little Black Fishes (2013) and Sulukule Mon Amour (2016), Azra Deniz Okyay’s first feature film Ghosts made its world premiere at the 77th Venice Film Festival. The film, which was shown in the ‘Critics’ Week’ section of the festival, was deemed worthy of the Grand Prize.

Over in the independent Venice Critics’ Week section for debut features, a jury of film critics including Variety’s Jay Weissberg handed the €5,000 ($5,917) Grand Prize to Turkish director Azra Deniz Okyay’s “Ghosts,” which intertwines the stories of four residents of a gentrifying Istanbul neighborhood over the course of a day.

The jury’s statement singled out the film for treating “characters as individuals rather than mere stand-ins for assorted social issues, while still painting a troubling portrait that encompasses multiple communities.” Paris-based MPM Premium is the sales agent.

As it turned out, female filmmakers ruled the roost at Critics’ Week: In addition to Okyay’s win, two other women took separately juried prizes.The film previously won two awards at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, the Special Jury Award and the Script Award at Cross-Roads Co-Production.

MPM Premium has closed a raft of deals on “Ghosts,” a Turkish drama by emerging helmer Azra Deniz Okyay (“Hayaletler”) which won the Grand Prize at Venice’s Critics Week.

The movie was just picked up for Spain by ConUnPack in a deal that was closed during the San Sebastian Film Festival. “Ghosts” was also acquired for Germany/Austria (Antiheld) and Greece (Strada).

The first Turkish film since 2018 to feature in the Venice program, “Ghosts” is set over a day, against the backdrop of a nationwide power surge and is a roaring tale of the contemporary generation. 

REVIEW

VENICE 2020 International Film Critics’ Week

Review: Ghosts

by David Katz

15/09/2020 - VENICE 2020: Turkish director Azra Deniz Okyay breaks out with an excellent debut film featuring a cross-cutting narrative, a deserving winner of the International Film Critics’ Week Grand Prize

Ghosts [+] has one of those brilliantly metaphorical titles. This is an urgently current piece of work, with no supernatural elements, yet the word perfectly evokes the tone of the film, conjuring a netherworld where a lost generation of young Turkish people walk. This debut feature, made in co-production with France and Qatar, garnered the main prize in the International Film Critics’ Week in Venice. It serves as a cinematic calling card for director Azra Deniz Okyay, who’s already won acclaim for her work in the art and advertising worlds.