The festival is born of the need to have more positive films, said Hussein Farmani, the organizer of the ION Film Festival.
“That was the whole idea of creating Ion Film Festival. Ion means positive charge, so we are aiming for the Ion Film Festival to promote positive films,” he said.
Each year Ion is held in a different international location in an effort to promote global awareness and unity. The 2007 ION International Film Festival was in Hollywood, 2008 in Dubai, 2009 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and in 2010 ION was in Istanbul.
“Ion travels because it wants to take the message all over the world. Next year we will be in Mexico,” added Farmani.
Speaking about the goal of the festival, event director Sara Bavari said the whole aim behind the Ion Film Festival was to support independent directors and art movies.
“These are film makers that are helping talent blossom,” she said.
Noting that this year’s Ion Film Festival in Istanbul was the most competitive one, Bavari said: “There were many [entries] and the talent was huge. It was the most competitive year. We have been very fortunate that we are the source for independent filmmakers. And that’s our main objective and goal. That’s why we keep moving, to discover independent film makers who work with a low budget but have talent.”
The festival is an opportunity to be seen, Bavari said. “We want to give them a stage.”
The Ion Film Festival also strives to provide filmmakers with a wide array of opportunities, from networking and helping their films acquire distribution for their projects.
In the award ceremony, which took place at Kadir Has University on Dec. 2, Turkish director Başak Büyükçelen’s movie, “Dilemma,” received the best student film award.
Mike Ott’s movie, called “Littlerock,” received the best feature award, while the best short movie award went to “Bad Language” from Viron Papadopolous.
Turkish director in the festival
“Dilemma” was one of the most popular movies in the festival. The main idea of the movie focuses on the differences between two characters.
Gafur, an extreme Muslim who was brought up to view all aspects of earthly life as an investment in the afterlife runs into a streetwalker who looks exactly like his wife. He takes a second glance and in horror realizes that the woman could truly be his wife’s identical twin. After a period of spiritual struggle, Gafur considers this a sign from God and decides to take on the mission of saving this woman from her perverted and sinful life.
Stepping out of his secluded life, he spends time with the identical twin and experiences the outside world for the first time. This experience slowly dives Gafur into delusion and paranoia.
Speaking about her movie, Büyükçelen said the movie had faced some criticism. “People first thought that this movie could show Turkey as a bad country.”
However, according to Büyükçelen, it is not the story of a society but a story of two different people.
“I am trying to depict the stories of two different people who have different beliefs and come from different social backgrounds,” she said.
At the end of the movie, the viewer understands that both characters have the same background, but life drew the woman to one direction and the man to another.
“So at the end, we see that two extreme characters find a common ground,” said Büyükçelen.
The director who aims to tell the stories of extreme characters hopes to create a trilogy based on the background.
“I do not aim for this movie to draw attention. My characters symbolize different people. They are individuals, not the whole society,” she said.
Büyükçelen studied at the Vancouver Film School and created her movie in Canada. She currently lives in Istanbul and is working on future projects.