No Witness but the Mountains
Overview:
The film is set in a small, snow-covered mountain village in Kurdistan. We follow a young woman, Helin, who wants to discover her family history. She lives with her mother, Susika, who has not spoken since her husband was arrested and imprisoned by the Turkish authorities. She cannot write or read either. Helin wants nothing more than to find out the story of her father. It is a story of how political oppression of a people and culture impacts that community, how it silences people, and about human resilience. Keeping a culture alive is a form of resistance.
Recommendations for you
I Saw the Sun
In the southeast region of Turkey, the Kurdish family of Altun lives in a small mountainside village plagued by a 25-year war that makes their daily lives a hellish struggle. As the war intensifies, the family is forced to migrate west to the city of Istanbul.
About Dry Grasses
A young art teacher hopes to be transferred to Istanbul after completing his mandatory duty in a remote village school in Anatolia. After accusations of inappropriate contact with a student surface, his hopes of escape fade and he descends further into an existential crisis.
Autumn
Arrested while a student in university, Yusuf is released from prison after ten years. He returns home and is welcomed by his sick and elderly mother. Soon he will meet Eka, a beautiful Georgian girl who is a sex worker, and love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and elude loneliness.
All Day and a Night
While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
Land of the Blind
A soldier recounts his relationship with a famous political prisoner attempting to overthrow their country's authoritarian government.
What Maisie Knew
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
Paper Lives
In the streets of Istanbul, ailing waste warehouse worker Mehmet takes a small boy under his wing and must soon confront his own traumatic childhood.
O.G.
Louis Menkins is five weeks away from being released after 26 years in prison. He is faced with the decision to put his own release at risk in order to protect a young man named Beecher from growing gang controversies.
Love Me Instead
Accompanied by a ward, a prisoner travels to his hometown to reconnect with his daughter and make amends, but a tragic truth mars his journey.
The Secrets We Keep
In post-World War II America, a woman, rebuilding her life in the suburbs with her husband, kidnaps her neighbor and seeks vengeance for the heinous war crimes she believes he committed against her.
Watchtower
Haunted by his dark past, a man takes a job as a fire warden in a remote tower in the wilderness, and is inexorably drawn towards a young woman with a terrible secret of her own.
Sibel
25-year-old Sibel lives with her father and sister in a secluded village in the mountains of Turkey’s Black Sea region. Sibel is a mute, but she communicates by using the ancestral whistled language of the area.
Rogue Agent
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
The Young One
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
Eleanor the Great
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
The Unforgivable
A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
Come Sunday
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
Nowhere to Run
Escaped convict Sam Gillen single-handedly takes on ruthless developers who are determined to evict a widow with two young children.
Midnight Express
Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".