THIS year’s Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival — the 56th — entered a new chapter following a two-year tug of war between Antalya’s former mayor Menderes Turel, a member of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), and the country’s independent film-making community over its direction.

As the city council bankrolls the festival, Turel had been able to control the national competition but that ended last March when he lost his seat to centre-left candidate Muhittin Bocek in local elections, which saw the AKP lose control.

This meant that this year’s festival heralded the return of the national feature film competition, as well as documentaries and shorts.  

Reasserting the high quality of Turkish film-makers, the films screened tackled burning contemporary issues such as unemployment, the high cost of living, violence against women, social inequality

A profound examination of our inner fears, The Adventure of Sukran The Lame by Onur Unlu is a dark urban fairy-tale comedy with iron in its soul. With a total absence of dialogue, it considers the plight of a young woman, Sukran, crippled by a childhood accident, as she struggles with an abusive father and bullying classmates.

Funny, tender and outrageous, this unpredictable film drives a nail into the prejudice of a  conservative society.

Ozkan Yilmaz’s elegant Breath, acted with real power, is an empathetic portrait of an ordinary man facing adversity. The solitary, middle-aged Asli is a cancer sufferer who befriends his young neighbour Tamer and when a caretaker comes on the scene.

An unusual new “family” is formed with bonds that overcome social status and age in what’s an urbane commentary on the times which, with a beautiful narrative, is unsentimental and profoundly moving.
 
Maryna Gorbach’s Omar and Us is set in a luxurious villa where a retired coastguard officer finds himself compelled by his wife to give shelter to a couple of refugees. It’s a good-looking film, decently written and one that will certainly have an emotional impact on audiences.

Aether by Kurdish film-maker Ruken Tekes pays homage to a unique ancient homeland, soon to be submerged by a hydroelectric dam, in what's an affecting poetic journey into urgent political and environmental issues.

Alper Sen’s Dictionary of Waste follows rubbish containers, waste pickers and second-hand shops to investigate the recycling process in Istanbul in what is an intense documentary in which Sen shows how millions of poverty-stricken people live in his home country and how no-one seems to want to do anything about it.