Istanbul Film Festival 2026: A City Encounters the Moving Image

[TURKIYE]

Istanbul Film Festival 2026: A City Encounters the Moving Image

From 9 to 19 April, the 45th edition brought together screenings, competitions and workshops. Its closing awards reflected the variety of films reaching audiences.

The 45th Istanbul Film Festival offered several routes into cinema: seeing a new film, discovering a director at the start of their career, revisiting the history of the moving image, or encountering a project still taking shape. Over eleven days, these experiences came together in a city whose audience lives on both sides of the Bosphorus. The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts organised the edition from 9 to 19 April 2026. Its closing awards introduced new names into the conversation about cinema, while representing only part of what the programme had offered.

Understanding this edition requires a distinction between the size of the programme, the number of competing films and the independent professional awards. A film’s inclusion in a festival does not necessarily place it in competition, and a jury’s choice is different from audiences’ response at the box office. Keeping these distinctions in mind helps explain what happened in April and what the festival offered viewers and filmmakers alike.

The entrance to Atlas Cinema and the Istanbul Cinema Museum. Archive photograph used for illustration.

From March’s announcement to April’s screenings

The programme was announced on 23 March, with 127 feature films and 13 shorts. Those figures covered the entire selection, including contemporary works, classics and special screenings. Films were shown from 9 to 19 April at venues across Beyoğlu, Şişli and Kadıköy, including Atlas 1948, Beyoğlu Cinema, Kadıköy Cinema and the municipal Cinematheque. Travelling between the city’s neighbourhoods became part of the festival experience itself.

The difference between a programme and a competition is easy to picture: audiences might attend a screening to revisit an established director’s work, while a jury considers a recent film in a particular category. The full film count therefore cannot be treated as the number of contenders for the main prize. Festival lists provide a framework for viewing, but audiences’ choices extend beyond the results.

The Golden Tulip: an international competition with Turkish voices

The festival closed on the evening of 19 April with an awards ceremony at The Marmara Taksim. Fifteen films from Türkiye and abroad competed in the Golden Tulip Competition. Its Best Film award, the Golden Tulip, went to Damien Hauser’s Memory of Princess Mumbi, a co-production between Kenya, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia, accompanied by €30,000. The result illustrates the competition’s international character: it brings together films from different countries, rather than automatically awarding its leading prize to a Turkish production because the event takes place in Istanbul.

Bi Gan’s Resurrection received the Special Jury Prize. Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret won Best Director for Summer Beats. The acting awards went to İnci Sefa Cingöz for Those Who Whistle After Dark and Kemal Burak Alper for Dead Dogs Don’t Bite. Director David Mackenzie chaired the competition jury.

Reading the results by category reveals more than focusing on a single name. The film award recognises the work as a whole; the directing award considers the shaping of a vision; acting awards recognise performance. These judgements need not coincide, and a film does not have to collect every prize for its presence to matter. Nor does an award, on its own, tell us how many people saw the film or how it was distributed afterwards.

New Visions and different beginnings

New Visions was devoted to directors presenting their first or second film. Morteza Atabaki’s 32 Meters won the section’s Seyfi Teoman Best Film Prize, with financial support of TRY800,000. The Short Film Competition awarded Gravity, directed by Dalya Keleş, a prize of TRY200,000. These amounts show that support for emerging filmmakers followed more than one route, encompassing both features and shorts.

New Visions included thirteen first or second films. Its jury brought together expertise in directing, acting, cinematography and production, alongside Bahçeşehir University student Meltem Naz Salduz. Including a student’s voice gave young people a role beyond sitting in the auditorium. Here, a young participant watched, discussed and assessed films with practitioners, extending the focus on a new generation beyond the directors’ ages.

This arrangement does not imply that young people share a single taste, or that one student represents everyone of the same age. Its value lies in bringing different experiences into a collective task and showing that learning about cinema includes watching and discussing it. For an arts or media student, following such initiatives can help explain the connections between study and the cultural circles graduates may later enter.

For viewers, a space for first films offers a chance to discover an unfamiliar voice. For filmmakers, participation provides an opportunity to test a conversation with an audience beyond their team and friends. That describes the competition’s role; it is no promise that winning will guarantee another production or commercial success. Festival exposure is a valuable step, followed by further questions about production, exhibition and reaching a wider audience.

Section or award	Selected 2026 result	What distinguishes it
Golden Tulip	Memory of Princess Mumbi — Damien Hauser	Best Film in the international competition
New Visions	32 Meters — Morteza Atabaki	A section for first and second films
Short Film Competition	Gravity — Dalya Keleş	A competition separate from the features
International critics	Rose of Nevada — Mark Jenkin	The independent international critics’ jury award

Gravity: from study to festival audiences

The winning short offers a concrete example of the connection between learning and filmmaking. Its director, Dalya Keleş, and producer, Didem Nur Yayman, both graduated from Kadir Has University’s Radio, Television and Cinema Department. Gravity follows twelve-year-old Deniz, exploring the pain and imagination that accompany growing up. It was also selected for the Generation short-film competition at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival. That was a competition selection; its Istanbul award was a separate result achieved in April.

These details make the win more meaningful than a headline naming the director alone. Behind the film lie production, collaboration and performance, and a journey from an idea to a work audiences can encounter beyond its original setting. One success need not become a general judgement on the university’s graduates or a guarantee for every student film. It illustrates one particular journey while acknowledging that other experiences develop under different circumstances.

“Short” describes the film’s duration and form, rather than any lesser seriousness. A fleeting incident or an inner change in a child’s life can be the centre of an entire film. The festival therefore maintained a separate competition with eleven shorts. That figure differs from the thirteen shorts in the complete programme: the programme extended beyond the jury’s remit.

When different professional bodies look at a film

Alongside the competition awards, independent juries represented critics, directors and documentary filmmakers. The International Federation of Film Critics jury chose Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada, while the Association of Documentary Filmmakers award went to Volkan Üce’s 2m2. These different bodies bring additional perspectives, making it important to identify each award precisely.

If a film receives a professional association’s award, a headline should not turn that into an unqualified claim that it was “the festival’s best film”. The distinction also helps viewers choose what to watch. Someone interested in documentaries, performance or screenwriting may find a specialist award closer to their interests. Disagreement between juries is part of critical life: a film does not offer everyone the same answer.

The façade of Rexx Cinema in Kadıköy, Istanbul, in 2018. Archive photograph; it does not indicate that the cinema is currently operating.

Meetings on the Bridge: before the finished film

Alongside the screenings, the 21st Meetings on the Bridge took place from 14 to 16 April, bringing international industry professionals from 31 countries together with filmmakers from Türkiye. Its activities covered project development, works in progress and a short-film workshop. The focus changes in this setting: an audience watches a finished film in the cinema, while a project team seeks a partner, advice or an opportunity to complete its work.

The platform results were published on 17 April. Supported projects included Huckster, which received TRY300,000, and Other Seasons of Hakkari, which received an award of the same value. These grants support stages of production; they are separate from Best Film awards in the international competition. Including them in the account of the festival shows that its work encompasses the industry as well as the scheduling of screenings.

The distinction between a project and a finished film becomes clearer when considering the stages involved. An idea may still need development; a team that has completed shooting may require editing and sound work; another may need promotion and distribution. Each stage raises a different question. Understanding the platform’s purpose is therefore useful before comparing amounts or names.

Honouring experience and welcoming new faces

The festival presented Cinema Honorary Awards to Nilüfer Aydan and Gianfranco Rosi, and its Cinema Contribution Award to Nuray Muştu. This strand recognised experienced artists and the work of organising cinema events, rather than choosing the best performance in a competing film. It broadened the focus from the screen to people whose work helps sustain these encounters with cinema.

Aydan exemplifies a career connecting the memories of cinema and television, while Rosi is associated with documentary filmmaking. Honouring either need not turn a report on this edition into a lengthy biography extending beyond the year of the event. What matters here is the presence of experience within a festival that also welcomes beginnings, and the meeting between a new generation and those who helped build these spaces before them.

Watching films and reading the city

Readers can revisit this edition through three perspectives: the award-winning films, the sections that introduced new work, and the activities connecting the industry with audiences. Together, these can sustain an interest in cinema after the eleven days have ended. One film may lead a viewer to explore its director’s other work; an acting award may draw attention to performance; a documentary may invite further reading about a social issue.

Watching the film remains the basis for any detailed assessment of its artistic merits. An official synopsis outlines the story, and an award records a jury’s choice, but neither replaces the complete experience. It is better to treat the results as a starting point for discovery, while checking the screening language, age classification and running time, rather than as a compulsory ranking of everyone’s taste.

Istanbul’s 2026 edition brought finished films together with emerging projects and professional memory. Seen in that way, the festival forms part of the city’s cultural life: screenings across different venues, meetings between people working at different stages, and films whose discussion continues after the screen goes dark.

Related Topics

• A Guide to Society and Culture News in Türkiye
• Education in Türkiye in 2025: Schools, Universities and Student Life
• Festivals and Cultural Life in Türkiye in 2025: Music, Cinema, Art and Living Traditions
• Life on Istanbul’s European and Asian Sides: Everyday Differences Across the Bosphorus
• Café Life in Türkiye: Tea, Coffee, Conversation and Working Away from Home
• Public Etiquette in Türkiye: Queues, Transport, Mosques and Parks
• Big-City and Small-Town Life in Türkiye: Social Pace, Privacy and Family Ties
• Student Life in Türkiye in 2025: Universities, Accommodation, Costs and Community
​