Accessible Culture in Türkiye in 2026: Film, Workshops and Artistic Participation

[TURKIYE]

Accessible Culture in Türkiye in 2026

From watching films with audio description to making animations and exhibiting artworks: moments that show how cultural participation extends beyond entering a venue.

Inviting the public to a concert or film may seem sufficient to open up cultural life, yet the experience itself depends on small details. Can viewers understand what happens in a silent shot? Do on-screen captions include important sounds? Does the setting allow movement and offer an appropriate sound level for people with sensory sensitivities? News from Türkiye in 2026 offered examples in which these questions became part of organising an activity, alongside choosing films or preparing a stage.

The Accessible Film Festival stood out in Ankara and Eskişehir, while a local festival in Kepez, Antalya, brought together performances, workshops and works made by disabled people. These experiences differ in scale and setting, but reveal a cultural space in which audiences, artists, children and families come together through participation. Their significance lies in the arrangements and content announced or delivered, rather than a general description claiming that an activity is for everyone.

The Sevda Şener Stage at the Gazhane cultural complex in Kadıköy, Istanbul. Archive photograph for illustration.

Ankara: the fourteenth edition of accessible cinema

The Accessible Film Festival, organised by Puruli Culture Art, brought its fourteenth edition to the Goethe-Institut Ankara from 24 to 30 April 2026. Screenings were free, with audio description and captions, while discussions with film teams and the awards ceremony included sign-language interpretation. The programme also announced that screenings and events could be followed in English.

The selection was not confined to a single form of cinema. It included the Short Film Competition, Kaleidoscope, bringing together a range of cinematic works, Auditorium, concerned with music and sound on screen, and a children's section. This variety shows that accessible viewing concerns how people experience a work, and does not require cinema to be reduced to one subject or one kind of story.

The Short Film Competition received 182 submissions from 34 countries, with 15 films from ten countries reaching the final selection. A committee of film critics Öykü Sofuoğlu, Hasan Nadir Derin and Kaan Denk selected the finalists. These figures concern the competition's submission and selection stages; they do not describe the total number of films screened across the festival or audience attendance.

The edition's announcement named supporters from different cultural fields, including the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Directorate General of Cinema, the Delegation of the European Union to Türkiye, the Goethe-Institut Ankara, the Institut Français, the Austrian Embassy and Cultural Office, and the Audio Description Association. This shows organisations concerned with film exhibition, cultural exchange and accessibility participating in the same project, without assigning a particular funding amount to each or assuming that they were responsible for every aspect of organisation.

What does audio description add to a film?

The festival explains that audio description communicates visual elements through narration between lines of dialogue: the place, time, characters' movements and events unfolding without speech. Captions, meanwhile, include dialogue and important sounds, such as a ringing telephone, a creaking door or birdsong, synchronised with the scene. The distinction matters: writing out dialogue alone does not fulfil the same role as including sounds that contribute to the drama.

The festival enables blind and partially sighted viewers to follow films through audio description, with Turkish dubbing available for works whose dialogue is in another language. Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers can follow Turkish captions, while other audience members can listen to the original soundtrack. These are different ways of receiving a work, leaving the film itself a shared space for viewers.

Culturally, the discussion after a screening becomes richer when participants can access the elements that created the story: a meaningful movement, an alarm or a look unaccompanied by speech. Knowing the ending is not enough to understand cinematic style; the way a scene is constructed is part of the work. Accessibility therefore relates to artistic experience as well as the practical provision of information.

April's awards: audiences also help choose

The awards ceremony took place in Ankara on 30 April, with live sign-language interpretation, audio description and English translation. The jury chose the Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay winners, while viewers' votes determined the Audience Award. Participation thus extended from watching films to helping select one of the winning works.

Award	Winning work	Filmmaker or recipient
Best Film	Pit-pool	Director Ana Vučićević
Best Director	Pretension	Mehdi Mirbagheri
Best Screenplay	What If They Bomb Here Tonight?	Samir Syriani and Nadine Chalhoub Syriani
Audience Award	A Phoenix Feather	Director Ronak Jafari

The table presents the results of this edition's Short Film Competition, rather than a general ranking of Türkiye's best films. The first two works appear here under their English titles, which the original account retained alongside explanatory Arabic translations to help readers identify them. Jury decisions and an audience vote bring together professional perspectives and direct viewing experience, without assuming that the two measure precisely the same thing.

A children's screening with sensory adjustments

Ankara's programme scheduled an autism-friendly screening at the Goethe-Institut for 2 pm on 27 April. The arrangements specified dim lighting, reduced sound, no advertisements or trailers before the film, and permission to bring food and drink and move around the auditorium. These provisions relate to one session; they are not a medical judgement about every child's needs or every experience of autism.

The selected film was Reza Memari's “The Last Whale Singer”. Running for 91 minutes, the Canadian, Czech and German production was listed as a 2025 film and included in the 2026 programme in Turkish, with audio description and captions. It follows the young whale Vincent as he faces fear and doubts about his ability to protect the ocean, on a journey accompanied by Walter and Darya, a deaf orca.

The story's content and its presentation meet here without turning the film into a therapy session. Children follow an adventure, characters and dramatic conflict, while the auditorium's arrangements help prepare the viewing experience. Including a deaf character in a story differs from providing captions for a deaf viewer: one is an element of the work, the other a way to access it, and both can form part of the same activity.

The Atatürk Cultural Centre in Samsun. Archive photograph for illustration.

Eskişehir: children make their own films

The festival completed its Eskişehir programme from 15 to 17 May at the Yunus Emre Cultural Centre. Its closing report, issued on 20 May, confirmed that screenings and accompanying activities were free and accessible. Selections included Kaleidoscope, Auditorium and films from the international competition, alongside discussions with directors, a screening with sensory adjustments and an animation workshop for deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

The city's programme announcement described the workshop's method clearly. Children would begin by drawing characters, make them in three dimensions using modelling clay, create stories for them and photograph them frame by frame to produce short stop-motion films. The announcement specified that the resulting works would be shown before the autism-friendly session. The closing report confirms that the animation workshop took place; its detailed steps remain a description of the announced approach.

This participation moves children from watching to choosing a character, animating it and building its story. It brings drawing, modelling and photography together in a work that can be shown to others. No long-term impact measurement is needed to recognise the difference between the two activities: watching a film is an experience of reception, while making a scene is an experience of expression. Individual learning outcomes would require their own follow-up and cannot be inferred from a workshop report alone.

Kepez: artists' work and families share a space

On 10 May 2026, Dokumapark in Kepez hosted the ENFES festival for disabled people and their families. The announced programme began with an exhibition of work developed through art training at home, followed by a qanun recital, theatre, entertainment and concerts. Workshops included crafts, colouring, skill-based games and design, with spaces for meeting and food provided during the day.

The municipality's report, published on 11 May, confirmed that the festival took place, with participants' work exhibited, workshops and stage activities delivered, and concerts by Grup Lokomotif and Görkem Durmaz. The artworks add an important dimension to the story: disabled people appeared as makers, alongside attending performances and activities with their families.

This kind of programme connects the period of training with the moment of presentation. An exhibition gives work made at home a place where an audience can see it; a workshop offers opportunities to practise during the festival; and theatre or music creates a shared viewing experience. Each element serves a different purpose, making “a day of entertainment” a less accurate description than an account of the programme's varied content.

Cooperation beyond one city

In a report published on 9 April, the Accessible Film Festival described its participation since 2019 in the BE IN! Network of Accessible Film Festivals. The network's six founding festivals come from Türkiye, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland and Belgium, and work on knowledge exchange and joint projects concerning cultural participation. This is earlier history revisited in 2026 coverage, rather than the network being founded anew during the year.

The examples from Ankara, Eskişehir and Kepez give practical meaning to varied forms of participation: a viewer follows a work in a suitable format, a child makes a film, an artist exhibits their work and a family attends an activity together. The value of these experiences remains tied to the continued provision of clear information about venues, screening arrangements and workshops. Details that allow people to know what to expect are part of opening cultural spaces to them.

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