The fourth edition of the UK’s only independent Turkish film festival, Taste of Anatolia – Films from Turkey (TOA) starts this weekend with a gala party in Cambridge, followed by a week of screenings that will run until 11 November 2022.

Launched in 2018, for the first time in the festival’s four year history film screenings will extend from TOA’s home city of Cambridge to London, as well as continuing online, allowing even more people across Britain to enjoy new cinema from Türkiye.

This year’s TOA programme lists 38 star-studded movies. Ten of these are feature-length films and 28 are shorts, with five of the 38 films documentaries.

The selection includes both prominent and upcoming Turkish directors tackling a myriad of themes, such as anti-war, religiosity, and a heist thriller using a blend of comic book and live-action drama.

Many of the films will be enjoying their UK premieres, among them the award-winning Bembeyaz (Pure White), screening at Dalston’s Rio Cinema on 9 November. The film is the debut feature of Necip Çağan Özdemir.

Showing at both the Rio (10/11) and Cambridge’s Old Divinity School (06/11) is Ceviz Ağacı (Silenced Tree), written, produced and directed by Faysal Soysal, who will be in attendance.

Another making its UK premiere is critically acclaimed family drama Çatlak (Fractured), director Fikret Reyhan’s follow-up feature to his award-winning film Yellow Heat. The film will be screening at Old Divinity School (06/11) and Artlens (08/11), London.

One of TOA 2022’s headline movies is Klondike, a multiple award-winning Ukrainian-Turkish production directed by Maryna Er Gorbach. The film centres on a family in the Donetsk region of Eastern Ukraine whose world is violently disrupted by the crash of flight MH17 in 2014 and the events that follow. The film travels to Cambridge’s Arts Picturehouse (08/11) following screenings at prestigious festivals such as Sundance, and the London, Berlin, and Istanbul Film Festivals.

Netflix’s hit series ‘The Club’ actor Salih Bademci and Nur Fettahoğlu, who came to global fame as the haseki (consort) of the Ottoman Sultan in Turkish period drama ‘Magnificent Century’, are among those starring in the festival’s top picks.

Other highlights from Taste of Anatolia – Films from Turkey 2022 include:

• Tunel / Tunnel (dir. Akın Güngör)
• Babamın Öldüğü Gün / The Day My Father Died (dir. Emre Sefer)
• Plastik Rüya / Plastic Dream (dir. Merve Bozcu)
• Aynı Gecenin Laciverti / Same Night Different Blue (dir. Nuri Cihan Özdoğan)
• APP (dir. Hatice Aşkın)
• Başımdaki Dünya / The World In My Head (dir. Yalçın Çifçi)
• Emeğin Sineması: Karanlıkta Uyananlar Belgeseli / Cinema of Labour: A Documentary on Those Who Wake up in the Dark (dir. Ebru Özyurt)

After two difficult years due to the coronavirus pandemic, TOA enthusiastically welcomes back audiences with theatre screenings in diverse venues in and around two cities. For Cambridge, TOA films will be showing at the Arts Picturehouse, Old Divinity School in St John’s College, Christ’s College, and Gardiner Memorial Hall in Burwell Village. TOA screening venues for London are Rio Cinema in Dalston, and Hackney’s Artlens.

Buy online pass for just £5!

This year’s TOA 2022 festival pass costs just £5, which gives access to all online screenings, as well as films being shown at Cambridge University colleges.

Festival passes can be purchased from Balık Arts’ online platform www.balikartstv.com. For all other TOA theatrical screenings, tickets are available direct from the cinemas.

TOA is organised by film charity Balık Arts. As part of its mission, Balık Arts offers young people direct experience of all aspects of film making and film festival management through hands on experience at TOA, from film selection to festival promotion and organising theatrical screenings.

TOA also hosts “Film Beyond Borders”, a transnational project funded by Erasmus+ and led by Balık Arts in the UK. This leg of the project will allow members of youth groups in Italy and Türkiye to travel to the UK to help run the TOA festival, and to attend event planning workshops.