Two Decades of Resistance: International Workers’ Film Festival Opens

Unsponsored, free to attend, and noncompetitive, the International Workers’ Film Festival (İşçi Filmleri Festivali) — one of Turkey’s longest-running alternative cinema events — returned for its 20th edition this year. Held simultaneously in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, the festival once again offered a strong program centred on labour from May 1 to 11, turning its venues into a rare refuge for uncensored cinema.

A total of 81 films, spanning themes such as labour, migration, gender, child labour, and solidarity, were screened at venues including Beyoğlu Cinema, the French Cultural Centre, Aynalı Geçit, the Kadıköy Barış Manço Cultural Centre, and TAK Kadıköy.

Emre Canpolat, who hosted the Istanbul leg of the festival, underscored its unsponsored and noncompetitive character during the opening night at Atlas Cinema.

“We’ve been here for 20 years. We’ve never had a sponsor, never set up ticket booths, and never put films in competition with each other,” he said. “We’ve made space for the stories of workers, labourers, peoples, the oppressed, and the invisible.”

This year, the festival was dedicated to child labourers, people forced to migrate, and children married at young ages.

As the May 1 anthem — Turkey’s Labour Day anthem — played, the audience watched footage from the March 19 student protests and May Day demonstrations. Five university students representing the resistance movement were then welcomed onto the stage.

In a video message sent to the opening, the artist Zülfü Livaneli said the festival serves an important purpose.

Mehmet Türkmen, general secretary of the United Textile, Weaving and Leather Workers’ Union (BİRTEK-SEN), could not attend in person because he was under house arrest. His recorded message, however, drew applause.

“Films show the invisible conflicts of life,” he said. “The few productions that tell the real stories of labourers not only allow us to watch, but also to remember and learn. One day, at the end of these stories, we will all live together in a liberated world.”

The festival also recognised figures who have supported workers’ cinema for years. Honorary plaques were presented to Alin Taşçıyan, Güzide Arslan, and Mert Fırat.

“An amazing festival program awaits us — it’s absolutely mind-blowing!” Taşçıyan told the audience from the stage.

The 2025 Cinema Worker Award went to Ezgi Baltaş and was presented by the director Emin Alper.

This year’s program also included a retrospective of the director Yeşim Ustaoğlu. Her films — including “Journey to the Sun” (Güneşe Yolculuk), “Waiting for the Clouds” (Bulutları Beklerken), and “Pandora’s Box” (Pandora’nın Kutusu) — were featured in the lineup.

The opening film, “Döngü” (“Cycle”), directed by Erkan Tahhuşoğlu, is one of his works focused on domestic labour and class conflict. It follows Sevim, a housecleaner who has worked for years, and the ethical and class-based dilemma she faces after a workplace accident in the home where she is employed.

This year, the festival expanded beyond screenings with a new publication. The book “Changing Cinema, Changing Audience” (Değişen Sinema, Değişen Seyirci), edited by the festival’s co-founder Önder Özdemir, examines the transformation of independent cinema in Turkey and the shifting role of audiences.

We spoke with Dr Lalehan Öcal, an assistant professor in the Radio, Television and Cinema Department at Yeditepe University’s Faculty of Communication and a contributor to the book, about the writing process, the opening film, and the festival’s place in today’s political landscape.

Öcal emphasised the significance of holding the festival not only in Istanbul but in multiple cities at the same time. She said that both extending cultural production beyond a single centre and sustaining the festival through solidarity for two decades were deeply meaningful.

Alternative festivals, she added, are not simply screening platforms but also public spaces for discussion. The Workers’ Film Festival, she said, opens a space that encourages social reflection.

“Just like in the opening film ‘Döngü,’ spaces open to questioning are created,” Öcal said. “If public space is shaped to include the people’s concerns, the existence of such festivals becomes part of this transformation.”

At the same time, she raised a more critical point about “Döngü.” Öcal said she found the film’s portrayal of immigrant characters in an antagonistic role troubling, arguing that it deepens class conflict without offering solutions or possibilities for solidarity.

“Although the film appears to depict the working class, it creates conflict rather than solidarity,” she said. “We’re almost watching the dominant ideology reproduce itself. One of the film’s effective scenes is when the worker character, who constantly travels by bus, takes the boss’s chauffeured car while serving the boss’s greater interests — and makes eye contact with one of the bus passengers through the window. It offers a comparison showing how class position can bring small, temporary comforts on the condition of serving larger interests. It has cinematically strong aspects, but ideologically it doesn’t offer us a horizon.”

Öcal also wrote the chapter “International Film Festivals, Hollywood Culture and Arts Policies, Mainstream Alternatives Within the Festival Framework.” In it, she examines how festival narratives can shape which films are elevated — and how dominant frameworks can absorb even what appears to be outside the mainstream.

“Festivals are a necessity in our cultural world,” she wrote. “Since my student days, I’ve clung to festivals with this hunger. Festivals can include examples from outside the mainstream. It’s very difficult to find stories of those whose stories aren’t told — those trying to make their voices heard — on mainstream fronts like Hollywood. Outside of festivals, for example, you have almost no chance of encountering films from the Philippines or Chile.”

In that sense, she said, the Workers’ Film Festival remains vital as a form of solidarity-based cultural production. Its survival for 20 years, she added, represents “the continuity of resistance.”