As every year, the Festival will include the National Feature Film Competition, the National Student Film Competition and the Mediterranean Short Film Competition. Promising audiences a pick of 238 films from all over the world, the Golden Boll will also be hosting Turkish premieres for several recent productions. Special screening sections are dedicated to students and the disabled and, as every year, the Festival programme will feature workshops, Q&A sessions and exhibitions. The heat is on for the 19th Golden Boll Film Festival, to be held from 17th-23rd September 2012 by the City Municipality of Adana. The Lifetime Achievement Awards, a traditional part of the Festival, will be presented this year to veteran Turkish screen stars, Ediz Hun and Perihan Savaş, together with producer, Abdurrahman Keskiner. In this Festival section, audiences will have the chance to watch a selection of Hun, Savaş and Keskiner’s films. The Lifetime Achievement Awards will be presented at the Opening and Awards Ceremony on Monday 17th September. Introduced by actor Caner Cindoruk, the ceremony will be broadcast live on A Haber. This year’s Festival also has a Guest of Honour: the ‘Queen’ of Turkish cinema, Türkan Şoray. The accompanying programme section will present a selection of films in which the Queen stars as lead. In a parallel event, the 75. Yıl Gallery will host an exhibition throughout the Festival week, showing costumes worn by Şoray in many of her screen roles. MOST GRIPPING COMPETITION OF RECENT YEARS Perhaps the most closely watched Festival section is the National Feature Film Competition. This year’s line-up comprises: Veli Kahraman’s Ana Dilim Nerede? (Where is My Mother Tongue?), Yeşim Ustaoğlu’s Araf (Somewhere In-Between), İsmail Güneş’s Ateşin Düştüğü Yer (Where Calamity Strikes), Elfe Uluç’s Aziz Ayşe (Saint Ayşe), Orhan Eskiköy and Zeynel Doğan’s Babamın Sesi (Voice of My Father), Derviş Zaim’s Devir (Cycle), Pelin Esmer’s Gözetleme Kulesi (Watchtower), Reis Çelik’s Lal Gece (Night of Silence), Selim Evci’s Rüzgarlar (Winds), İnan Temelkuran and Kristen Stevens’s Siirt’in Sırrı (Know My Name), Belmin Söylemez’s Şimdiki Zaman (Present Tense), Filiz Alpgezmen’s Yabancı (Stranger), Zeki Demirkubuz’s Yeraltı (Inside) and Erden Kıral’s Yük (Load). The Best Film named by the competition jury stands to win an award worth TL 350,000. Chaired by director Ferzan Özpetek, this year’s jury is made up of cinematographer Eyüp Boz, music producer Hasan Saltık, lecturer and academic Hülya Uğur Tanrıöver, actor Nejat İşler, actress Nurgül Yeşilçay and producer Zeynep Özbatur Atakan. GOLDEN BOLL SUPPORTS SHORT FILMMAKERS AGAIN The National Student Film Competition is open to undergraduate students studying at the film and television departments of universities in Turkey. In this year’s competition, 10 films have been selected for the fiction category, nine for the documentary category, five for the animation category and six for the experimental category. The finalist student films will be judged by a jury that includes director Veli Kahraman, animation director Lamia Karaali, director Türkan Derya, producer and critic Nadir Öperli, and actress Nesrin Cavadzade. The Best Film in each of the four categories of the National Student Film Competition will be awarded a cash prize of TL 7500. In a practice exclusive in Turkey to the Golden Boll, a screening fee of TL 500 is also paid to every finalist film. Turning to the Mediterranean Short Film Competition, the section is, as its name suggests, open to short film makers from all Mediterranean countries. This year, 36 films have been selected for the fiction category, 13 for the experimental category, six for the documentary category and nine for the animation category. The jury for this Golden Boll competition comprises: Anaelle Bourguignon of the International Film Festival of Marseille; Italian film director-producer David Maria Putorti; animation director Priit Tender of Estonia; Paola Starakis of the Greek Film Centre’s Short Film Division; and Turkish actor Devin Özgür Çınar. The Best Film chosen by the jury in each category will be awarded prize money of TL 10,000. The results of all three Festival competitions will be announced on the evening of Saturday 22nd September at the Closing and Awards Ceremony. This will take place at the TÜYAP International Conference Centre. The ceremony, to be presented by actress-singer Zuhal Olcay and actor Mahir Günşiray, will be broadcast live on A Haber. IMPRESSIVE LINE-UP OF WORLD CINEMA PREMIERES Audiences will be presented with 238 films from all over the world during the Festival, where Turkish premieres are to be held, amongst others, of Fatih Akın’s Garbage in the Garden of Eden, Michael Haneke’s Love and Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love. Performances will be held at 10 screens in the Cinemaximum, Metropol and Avşar cinemas, as well as the City Municipality Theatre Hall. SPECIAL SCREENINGS FOR STUDENTS AND THE DISABLED Now a traditional part of the Golden Boll Film Festival, the ‘Schools in Cinema – Cinema in Schools’ event sets out to bring the art of cinema to schoolchildren. This section of the Festival gives students the opportunity to watch films at two dedicated screens in the Cinemaximum and Avşar cinemas. The special screenings are scheduled for 10.00 every day from 18th-21st September. Separately, film screenings will be held at 71 schools in the Adana area. Targeting some 80,000 students, the event will bring young audiences a tailor-made selection of films. Another traditional feature of the Festival is special film screenings for the disabled. This year, in a collaboration between the Adana City Council’s Committee for the Disabled, the city’s rehabilitation centres and related schools, students with visual, hearing and mental impairments will have the chance to watch specially selected films at a fully equipped cinema within Acıbadem Hospital. The screenings will be held daily at 10.00 from 17th-22nd September. For disabled adults, on the other hand, there will be a separate programme of films at the City Municipality Theatre Hall at 14.00 on 17th, 19th, 20th and 21st September. The screenings include: Selçuk Aydemir’s 2011 feature, Çalgı Çengi (Dancing Girl) with a voice-over by Doğa Rutkay; the Metin Erskan directed 1965 film, Sevmek Zamanı (Time to Love) with the voice of Ececan Gümeci; and Onur Ünlü’s 2008 film, Güneşin Oğlu (Son of the Sun) with a voice-over by Beste Bereket. CINEMA WORKSHOP ON DISABLED THEME In a further Festival event, screenwriter-director Işıl Özgentürk will lead a workshop on the ‘disabled’ theme. Basic training will take place from 17th-21st September, while for the remaining two days of the Festival participants will make their own films. DOCUMENTARY SCREENING, Q&A AND CONCERT The 19th Golden Boll Film Festival, to be held by City Municipality of Adana from 17th-23rd September, will be hosting the premiere of İlk Türkü: Buğdayın Türküsü (First Song: Song of the Wheat), a documentary about the formation of Yeni Türkü, one of Turkish music’s foremost bands, and the story behind the band’s debut album, ‘Song of the Wheat’. The film’s premiere will take place at 15.00 on Tuesday 18th September at the City Municipality Theatre Hall. The screening will be followed at16.15 by a Q&A session entitled ‘Yeni Türkü: Birth of a Band’ with director Can Dündar and current and former band members Derya Köroğlu and Selim Atakan. To round off the event, the band will take the stage in a live performance at 17.30.