Neighbour Next Door April 24–May 11, 2014

Istanbul Modern Cinema presents a selection of 17 films curated by Müge Turan. Carried out in conjunction with the exhibition “Neighbours,” the program visits the cinema of contiguous countries, from the Middle East and Balkans to the Mediterranean and Asia. With the impact of the global media, the contribution of these “neighbour” films to cultural history is becoming ever more visible. These films discuss concepts such as social and cultural change facilitated by the new world order, local attitudes, national identity, reckoning with history, and modernization. Though they belong to other periods and geographies, we are united in communion and even complicity with the characters in these stories, and share the same sufferings. Sometimes this sorrow, so familiar to us, is accompanied by a cutting witticism, and sometimes by affectionate humor. Beyond these shared feelings, the films in the program present the diverse states of “not fitting in,” familiar to those living on the periphery. These films, which have, one way or another, survived into the present, are just as arduous as the processes experienced by the diverse geographies from which they come. Istanbul Modern Cinema is pleased to bring these films to the audience they deserve.