Golden Orange 2026: Filmmakers Explain Their Films in Antalya

The Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival has started its 63rd edition, and the first screenings brought directors and casts face to face with audiences. According to Milliyet, citing the DHA news agency, filmmakers used the post-screening talks to explain why they made their films. Here are the main points from those sessions.

The festival runs for about a week, and the opening days mixed documentary, international competition and national competition titles. Each screening was followed by a question-and-answer session.

Golden Orange 2026 opening day: documentary and diaspora stories

Şeyda Canan directed the documentary Kameranın Arkasındaki Kadınlar (Women Behind the Camera), shown as a special opening-day screening. She said it is her first film and that she made it with a small team. According to her, production studios opened their doors, and she held long conversations with the people who appear in it.

In the International Competition, Hüseyin Aydın Gürsoy presented A Turkish Case (Bir Türk Meselesi). He said the film grows out of his own experience. He moved to France at the age of three and later took a French name to make life easier.

Gürsoy said the film follows a character caught between Türkiye and France. It also criticises the French system and questions parts of the Turkish community there. He described the central theme as assimilation and integration, and he said the film is really about migrants in general.

The music reflects the same two-sided idea. Musician Emrah Kaptan, who grew up in France, set a guitar for the French side against a saz, a long-necked Turkish string instrument, for Turkish identity.

National Competition films on belonging, solidarity and shelter

Ufuk Emiroğlu’s Sevda links urban transformation in Istanbul with personal memory. Emiroğlu said he followed the changes in the Fikirtepe neighbourhood for years while writing the script. Actor Ercan Kesal, who took part in the script stage, called the film a story of exile and of not being able to belong. He also described it as a father-daughter story.

On Sunday, 25 October, two National Competition films were screened. Biket İlhan’s Tatlı Maya follows three women from different cultures, histories, languages and religions. İlhan said she wanted to recall the warm neighbourhood relationships of her youth. Actors Ayça Bingöl and Cansu Tosun both pointed to the script’s emphasis on women’s solidarity. Emre Altuğ, who plays the narrator, said he loved the screenplay, and Erdem Ergüney spoke of a “Yeşilçam atmosphere” on set. Yeşilçam is the traditional name for the Turkish film industry.

The second film, Taş ve Tüy, was written and directed by Ragıp Türk. It tells the story of Nazire, a woman who tries to win her son back from social services after leaving prison. Türk said he wanted the film to bear witness to its era. He named housing insecurity and people pushed toward crime as underlying issues. Actor Tuğba Kürükoğlu summed up the story as being about shelter, ownership and belonging.

Why these talks matter to readers

The Golden Orange is Türkiye’s best-known film festival, and its Q&A sessions often show what filmmakers are thinking about. This year’s first talks share a theme: belonging, whether in a foreign country, a changing city or a hard social system. Most of the films mentioned are festival titles, so wider release dates have not been confirmed in the source.

Further screenings and talks will follow through the rest of the festival week.

Source: Milliyet (DHA)
Featured image: Onur (talk) (Uploads) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0