10 Reasons Not To Miss Out On
15th Akbank Short Film Festival

04.03.2019

Article: Tuba Altuntaş
Translation: Yetkin Nural

Akbank Short Film Festival is bringing together shorts from all over the world for its 15th year. Aside from Short Film Forum, this year’s impressive program features conversations, workshops, special screenings and masterclasses. Here are 10 reasons not to miss out on 15th Akbank Short Film Festival:

• Akbank Short Film Festival started off 15 years ago with a vision to create a platform for short films to meet audiences, discover and encourage new filmmakers and create a festival culture that meets international standards. If you would like to dive into thousands of stories from all over the world over the course of 10 days, 15th Akbank Short Film Festival is the right address.
• This year festival received 1406 film applications from 68 different countries. The final program includes 111 shorts and 3 full features from 40 different countries, some of which premiered at important festivals like Cannes, Venice and Berlin.
• The guest of the festival’s Experiences section, Elite Zexer, an important woman director from Israel, is joining the festival with her debut full feature Sand Storm, which received Jury Price from Sundance Film Festival, as well as two of her shorts. Zexer will also give a masterclass where she will share the challenges she faced during Sand Storm’s long production process.
• The guest of festival’s Short to Feature section will be Mehmet Can Mertoğlu. Mertoğlu’s first feature, Album, which received 15 awards including France 4 Visionary Award from Cannes Festival, as well as his shorts Yokuş and Fer, will meet the audiences during Short to Feature screenings.
• Documentary Shorts section will feature Croatian writer and director
  Nebojša Slijepčević's award winning Srbenka, which premiered at the last Cannes Film Festival. Slijepcevic will also give a masterclass where he will share his inspiring experiences.
• Short Film Forum, a platform that encourages and supports short film production from their idea phase, features Short Film Scenario Competition. This year the competition received 698 scripts, from which 8 made it to the finals. If you would like to share the excitement of finding out the winner, or to attend Serbian writer/director Gordan Matic’s scenario workshop, save the dates!
• This year Special Screenings program focuses on Latin America shorts. If you would like to discover films and directors from Latin countries, make sure you check out the films in this section.

• Filming With Mobile Devices, The Relation Of Technology And Film Production Workshop with the art director of festival Selim Evci and cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki; Director of Photography Workshop with Murat Tuncel, a popular cinematographer who is responsible for the visual world of many films and series; Alternative Education at Cinema Workshop with Bau IDEA team, who aims to create specialists in various fields of cinema and Acting Workshop with acting coach Merve Taşkan are among the workshop highlights from festival’s program.

• If you are a university student and missed out on the festival, you can catch up with both national and international winner shorts during “Award Winning Films at Universities” events.
• Successful actor Ercan Kesal from this year’s jury and talented cinema and television actress Hazar Ergüçlü’s “About Acting”, İmre Tezel, Uğur Yüksel and Zümrüt Bürül’s “Marketing and Cinema”, Hakan Bıçakcı’s “Literature and Cinema Relation”, Burak Göral, Selin Gürel and Melikşah Altuntaş’ “Film Criticism at Turkey”, Ezgi Beltaş’ “Where does the duty of casting director begins and how long is it take?” are the highlights from 15th Akbank Short Film Festival’s conversation events.