Turkish Auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan Sparks Backlash for Reportedly Planning to Attend Government-Run Iranian Film Festival

Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2014 for “Winter Sleep” among many other accolades, has come under fire from the Iranian Independent Filmmakers Association (IIFMA) for allegedly accepting to attend Iran’s government-run Fajr Film Festival.

The Fajr Film Festival, which is Iran’s top film event, is set to run in the southwestern city of Shiraz from Nov. 26 to Dec. 3 and will showcase 45 films selected from 30 countries, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

The festival’s website said Bilge Ceylan will attend as a special guest, while several official Iranian and Turkish news outlets reported that the director is serving as president of the festival’s jury.

Bilge Ceylan — whose works besides “Winter Kills” also comprise “Three Monkeys” (2008), “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” (2011), “The Wild Pear Tree” (2018) and, more recently, “About Dry Grasses” (2023) — did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.

Iran’s government-controlled Tehran Times newspaper reported in October that Bilge Ceylan was in Tehran to hold a series of masterclasses at a government-sponsored event called “The Glory of Cinema.”

“The news of your collaboration with the Fajr Film Festival in Iran under the rule of the Islamic Republic has caused astonishment and distress among those who have followed your work for years with a close eye on its humanistic and intellectual world view,” IIFMA said in an open letter to Blige Ceylan issued on Tuesday.

IIFMA — which is headed by Dubai-based dissident Iranian producer Kaveh Farnam — asked the Turkish director to reconsider his involvement with the Fajr Film Festival, claiming his participation “effectively strengthens the images the government seeks to present of the country’s cultural situation — images that do not align with the actual experiences of those facing censorship, repression and constraint.”

The current climate for filmmakers in Iran, amid political turmoil, involves strict state controls, censorship and the risk of imprisonment, as evidenced by the plights of prominent Iranian directors Jafar Panahi (“It Was Just an Accident”) and Mohammad Rasoulof (“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”), both of whom have spent time behind bars for making movies deemed to be against the Iranian regime.

The IIFMA open letter noted that recently Iranian security forces have killed hundreds of dissident protesters in various crackdowns, most notably during the nationwide “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022-2023.

“After the widespread suppression of public protests during the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement, the Islamic Republic has tried to normalize everything by holding state-organized events and ceremonies,” IIFMA went on to point out. “Among these, the Fajr Film Festival has been one of the most important showcases for this effort, a showcase that today holds little significance for a large portion of the Iranian artistic community.”

The IIFMA added: “For this reason, the presence of the name of an international filmmaker with your artistic reputation and intellectual orientation in this festival amounts only to a misuse of your prestige for this propaganda display.”