Yusuf and his best friend Memo are pupils at a boarding school for Kurdish boys, secluded in the mountains of Eastern Anatolia. When Memo falls mysteriously ill, Yusuf is forced to struggle through the bureaucratic obstacles put up by the school's repressive authorities to try to help his friend. But by the time the adults in charge finally understand the seriousness of Memo's condition and try to get him to the hospital, the school has been buried under a sudden, heavy snowfall. With no way out and now desperate to reach help, teachers and pupils engage in a blame game where grudges, feelings of guilt and hidden secrets emerge, as time ticks mercilessly on and threatens to run out.

Francesco and Marta are husband and wife running a small design company in Rome. When Francesco's long forgotten Aunt Anita dies in Istanbul, he travels there to look after the sale of the hamam (one of a few traditional Turkish baths left) he inherited. There he meets the family running the hamam, gets attracted to a member of it and the whole Turkish atmosphere and decides not to sell the hamam..

When Altan swipes prescription drugs from his brother Nuri's pharmacy, they soon find themselves on a dangerous but funny road trip to get rid of the stuff and escape the mafiosi Altan tried to double-cross. Along the way, the brother who are compete opposites finally bond.

Isa is beaten up after being accused of stealing $50. When his landlord demands the back rent, Isa gets angry and shoots him. The police round up the tenants, but are not suspicious of him. Back in his room, Isa collapses and is helped by his pretty neighbor Meryem, who also pays the $50 when the thugs return. Isa promises to do anything for her, and tells her about his job as a TV extra. Meryem's husband has left her with her two young children, while he is away working. When her husband returns and beats Meryem up, she asks Isa to kill him.

The tragicomic story of a young man who wants to be a famous singer

After not having seen each other for 20 years, two women are reunited on the small Turkish island where, as teenagers, they first fell in love. What is the mysterious force that binds them together after all this time? And what can they do about it?

Marba and Aras are a husband and wife who had to leave their homeland because of conflicts. They cross deserts and mountains on foot, almost starving, hoping to be able to start a new life somewhere. When their endurance is at an end, they see a house in the middle of nowhere.

Based on a true event, Pardon tells the tragicomic story of three friends who end up in prison when they are mistaken as members of a terrorist organization. Ibrahim's fear of uniforms makes him runaway whenever he sees one. Because of this, police mistakes him with a terrorist and takes him and his friend Muzo into custody. Fooled by the police during the interrogation they name another friend, Aydin, in hope of saving themselves. As they all end up in prison, they remember the families and lovers they left behind.

Omer Kavur recreates Zebercet, the receptionist of a sad, bleak hotel in a small Anatolian town, adapting him from Yusuf Atilgan's novel in an attempt that seemed risky to others. A film about loneliness, solitude, obsession and depression, evidently one of the most painful films in Turkish cinema.

1986 Turkish film directed by Ömer Kavur

11-year-old Aslan saves an injured Kangal sheepdog named Sivas, a fighting dog that was left for dead after losing a brutal match. He then tries to use Sivas to impress his classmates, in particular the girl he likes, and even sets up an amateur fight with another boy's dog.

Mahsun is homeless and unemployed. He lives in Rumelihisari (one of the most picturesque and oldest quarters of Istanbul), and tries to stay alive with the help of local fishermen. Mahsun loves cars, he steals at nights and in the mornings he drives them back clean and well kept. He lives to emphasize the strange togetherness of possibilities and impossibilities. In this togetherness, Mahsun experiences friendship, trust, a one-way love affair and torture. He insists to survive in his open-air coffin of ancient Istanbul streets.

Sumru is doing music researches at a university in Istanbul. To work on her thesis on gathering and recording an exhaustive collection of Anatolian elegies she sets off for the south-east of the country for a few months. The brief trip turns out to be the longest journey of her life. During the trip, Sumru crosses paths with Ahmet, a young guy who sells bootleg DVDs on the streets of Diyarbakir, with Antranik, the ageing and solitary warden of a crumbling church in the city and with various characters who witness the ongoing 'unnamed war'. During her three-month stay in Diyarbakir, while she was looking for the stories of the elegies, she finds herself to confront an agony from her own past.

Early summer. In a village in northern Turkey, Lale and her four sisters are walking home from school, playing innocently with some boys. The immorality of their play sets off a scandal that has unexpected consequences. The family home is progressively transformed into a prison; instruction in homemaking replaces school and marriages start being arranged. The five sisters who share a common passion for freedom, find ways of getting around the constraints imposed on them.

2015 film directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven

A dwarf and a transvestite, both are excluded from the society and doomed to exist at night. Their lives overlap in a strange encounter and this becomes the start of their friendship.

The Selection: Turkey

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