You know that the summer is over when film festivals start in Istanbul. Filmekimi (translates as Filmoctober) is the third biggest film festival in Istanbul and it will be held on October 4 – 13 this year for the 18th time. Filmekimi’s programme has always been a fine mixture of highly anticipated auteur movies and independent hidden gems. This year, filmgoers will have the opportunity to see Palme d’Or winner “Parasite”, the last movies of Almodovar and Malick that hailed by critics as a “return to form” for both directors as well as lesser known movies from world festivals.
My top ten recommendations of this year’s programme would be like this:
1.PARASITE (Bong Joon-Ho, South Korea)
2.A HIDDEN LIFE (Terrence Malick, USA)
3.PAIN AND GLORY (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
4.HATSUKOI (Takashi Miike, Japan)
5.MONOS (Alejandro Landes , Colombia)
6.MARRIAGE STORY (Noah Baumbach, USA)
7.PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (Céline Sciamma, France)
8.A WHITE WHITE DAY (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland)
9.SORRY WE MISSED YOU (Ken Loach, UK)
10.BACURAU (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil)
You can check out the programme of the festival here:
http://filmekimi.iksv.org/en/movies
HOW TO GET TICKETS?
Tickets will be on sale on September 29th on Biletix, you can buy your ticket online and receive them at the entrance of the theatre. Here is the link to buy the tickets:
http://www.biletix.com/film-grup/213693377/TURKIYE/tr
If there is a movie you want to see and the tickets are sold out, you can go to the theater half an hour before the movie starts, get in the queue for extra tickets and wait till the screening time. Just before the screening, they print around 20-50 extra tickets (depending on the empty seats inside), you can buy your ticket and sit on one of the empty seats inside.
THEATRES
Two of the theaters (Atlas and Beyoğlu) are located on Istiklal Street where you can feel the festival atmosphere much better while waiting in the queues for tickets or enjoying your coffee in-between movies. City’s is located in Nişantaşı, not too far from the other two, it’s a 10 minute taxi ride or a metro stop away from Taksim. The other two theaters in the festival (Kadiköy and Rexx) are located in the Asian side.
Serdar Cengiz, 28/09/19