The International Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival has been contributing to the advancement of Turkish cinema for the past 47 years. Throughout its 47 year history, the Golden Orange has been a prestigious platform, contributing to the great forward leaps of Turkish cinema, but also sharing its burdens. The theme of this year’s festival is “Film and Social Interaction” and the festival program explores subthemes such as “film and socio-political interaction”, “the interaction between film and national image” and “film and economic interaction” with thematic film screenings, panels, exhibitions, discussions and workshops.
Like last year, this year’s national feature competition has received a record number of submissions, not only attesting to the high esteem our festival holds, but also pointing to the recent boom in our film industry. We are fully aware of the social function of the art of cinema. By spreading festival activities across the Western Mediterranean region, we have taken and will continue to take important steps in making Antalya “the festival of the people” rather than of a limited cultural elite.
With honorary awards given to a range of those who work in film from producers to crew members, Antalya contributes directly to the promotion of Turkish cinema, as well as working to increase the influence of Turkish cinema internationally.
Last year we introduced the new award category of “Best First Film” in an endeavor to encourage young filmmakers to shoot feature-length films. This year, we have added another new award, the “Antalya Incentive Award”.
In addition to monetary prizes, the Golden Orange Film Festival gives honorary awards to people whose work has made strides to improve Turkish cinema. Of these awards the “Honorary Award”, the “Yıldırım Önal Memorial Award” and the “Cinema Labor Award” have become permanent fixtures of the festival, helping create a pantheon of honorary figures in Turkish cinema.