Rate Your Festival: Adana

Festivals judge filmmakers. Filmmakers rarely judge them back. Because they need the laurels.

It’s time to flip the script.

We just got back from the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival in Turkey with the Promising Actress and Special Jury awards for our film, Marriage A-la-Mode (2026).

When I went up on stage to accept the award, I had one thought on my mind: If we are building something, we shouldn’t be afraid to talk about how to make it better. I said on stage that festivals need to build their criticism mechanism. Afterwards, the Head of Cultural Affairs pulled me aside and said, “Share your thoughts with us.”

So, I did. I wrote them a letter. And I will share these notes with you here, too (If you want to read the original letter sent to them, you can find it here in Turkish).

PART I: WHAT NEEDS TO BE FIXED?

1. The festival’s intercity transportation policy is discriminatory:

The festival’s regulations state, “Domestic transportation will be covered”. We are a team that shot our film in Rize, and our production company is based there. The flights for two of our team members flying from Rize to Adana were rejected on the grounds that they were “connecting flights” and therefore counted as “two tickets”. Personally, to solve the problem, I agreed to drive two hours by road and fly out of Trabzon. But the issue isn’t whether we can solve this logistics problem internally; it is a matter of principle. For a national festival to exclude connecting flights in its transportation policy directly penalizes and disadvantages filmmakers producing outside of Istanbul and major metropolitan areas. While Turkish cinema is stuck in Istanbul and trying to break free from it, their centralist policy practically pushes Rize into an “international” status. If the festival has such a restriction due to budget constraints, they should explicitly state, “Connecting flights are not covered,” in the regulations. This lack of transparency put me in an awkward position as a producer in front of my own team. National cinema is supported by equally embracing creators from every corner of the geography.

2. We felt like we were invisible in Adana:

• Before the festival, they didn’t even inform me which hotel I would be staying at. I landed at the airport, and my name wasn’t on the list. I asked the attendant for my hotel, and they didn’t know. I reached the hotel by following the crowd like a sheep.
• Until October 1st, our screening day, no one contacted us. There was no face-to-face introduction, no itinerary to follow. We had to call the general coordinator ourselves the day before the screening. We were told, “We were going to inform you on the morning of the screening.” At a festival we were attending for the first time, we were left in the dark and without a plan for a long time. They could have at least told us in the first few days that the information would arrive on the morning of the screening.
• We are a team attending Adana for the first time. Aside from a selection committee member (Esin Kucuktepepinar) shaking my hand before the screening, no festival executive came up to say, “Welcome, let’s meet” neither before nor after the screening. We only interacted with a few staff members who assisted us on the days of the screening and the award ceremony. We felt completely isolated at the festival. Teams entering the industry or coming from outside should be made to feel like welcomed guests from day one; the festival’s first reflex should be to embrace them, not ignore them.
• We experienced a coordination crisis regarding the interview sessions. The staff member in charge of the interviews promised me: “A list will be sent to you after the screening, you will choose from it, and we will create a schedule based on your approval.” A list was sent to me at 2:27 AM after our screening night. I saw it the next morning. While I was having breakfast, the staff member walked right up to my table with the interviewer. It turned out that the list sent at midnight wasn’t a list for me to choose from, but a finalized interview schedule that I was assumed to have “approved” without ever being asked. I was expected to jump right into the interview at that moment. I politely declined and explained that I did not approve the interviews, and asked for 5-10 minutes to review the list and pick someone. I quickly chose a name. The person I chose hadn’t seen the film and wasn’t available; they “could be scheduled for tomorrow”. I went to the film’s second screening, found an interviewer through my own efforts, and organized the interview myself. The real damage here is this: the journalists were told that I had approved these interviews. People prepared for the interviews and were disappointed when they were suddenly canceled. Because of the festival’s negligence, I was made to look like an unprofessional person who “cancels approved interviews at the breakfast table” in the eyes of the press. The bill was charged to my reputation. But the fault lies entirely with the coordination team, and this is proven by concrete evidence and messages. (I personally informed those in the press who wrote about this issue by emailing them directly. I stated that I did not cancel the interviews and that I chose someone from the list provided by the festival. Even though they acknowledged the truth, they did not change the relevant parts in their articles. I do not want to express this in mild terms like “press ethics”, this is called telling a LIE in my world. Here are the articles: Milliyet, Aposto. I leave them to your judgment.)
• So why did all this happen? Are the festival staff malicious? Absolutely not. I believe everyone was trying to do their job with great dedication and sincerity. However, due to a heavy workload, they simply couldn’t keep up with everyone. The solution could be this: Either reduce the selection and host fewer people perfectly, or build larger, better-coordinated teams with more staff.

3. Some audience members were disrespectful:

A world premiere is a critical and special moment, both for the prestige of the festival and for the motivation of a team that has spent months on a project. The crew is in the theater to experience their film with an audience for the first time. It is, of course, the audience’s natural right to dislike a film and leave halfway through; but if it is a premiere and the creators are in the room, I personally wouldn’t leave that seat unless I received news of a death on my phone. To me, basic ethical respect demands this.

Because of our film’s style, we naturally expected walkouts, but we didn’t expect it to be this chaotic and disrespectful. During both of our screenings, there were severe disruptions that ruined the viewing comfort and theater discipline. Audiences entering late, leaving early, doors constantly opening and closing, and even staff members walking in and out during the screening physically disrupted that first-screening atmosphere. I even witnessed a person who arrived late and then left early shortly after. This shows a massive vulnerability in the festival’s door management.

The duty of a festival with a 33-year history isn’t just to project a film onto a screen, but to instill premiere culture and theater etiquette in its audience. If a first screening is taking place, the fact that “the crew is here and watching the film for the first time” must be heavily emphasized in an announcement before the film, and the audience should be educated about this special circumstance via social media. If people must leave the theater, they need to be taught the culture of doing so without making vocal reactions (like shouting “Terrible!”) and without walking directly in front of the screen.

As a solution: World premieres could be sold in a higher-priced category to guarantee pairing with a more conscious audience. In the film’s synopsis, we specifically underlined that this could be an “anti-film.” However, this wasn’t made clear enough in the promotional materials of the festivals. Placing accurate tags on films like “contains experimental elements” can ensure the audience walks into the theater knowing what to expect. Perhaps there could even be an announcement beforehand instructing those who might want to leave on how to do so quietly. When there is immense effort involved and a crew living this moment for the first time, the lack of proper audience guidance and the failure to enforce theater rules wounded this once-in-a-lifetime experience for us. These operational gaps must be addressed with stricter door policies and preventative measures.

4. The moderator was not good enough:

Q&A sessions are where a film breathes and merges with the audience. The people who stayed until the end were highly engaged and wanted to talk. But our moderator couldn’t read the room and didn’t focus on the audience. Instead of spreading the conversation across the room and the crew, she interrupted the communication. Using my own initiative, I had to encourage crew members who hadn’t spoken and audience members whose eyes were begging to speak. Even then, some of our crew members didn’t get a chance to talk.

Our goal was to create an alternative to the boring, monotonous, and safe Q&A rituals of festivals. If the moderator hadn’t intervened, we could have opened up a much more honest space where everyone could critique each other honestly (and harshly). This isn’t a disrespect to the audience; it is a creative challenge. The festival must work with talented moderators who know how to ignite a conversation with an audience exhausted from watching films all day, let it flow naturally, and then know when to step back. It is not enough to just be a journalist or press member; these individuals must have high social skills to warm up the room.

5. Social media visibility was not fair:

Another goal for filmmakers like us is visibility. And this must be equal and fair among competing films. But our visibility on the festival’s social media was limited. Furthermore, the speech we gave after the screening, which the festival posted on Instagram, was cut short. For example, while another film, The Wealth ,was given 4 minutes of screen time, our film, Marriage A-la-Mode, was given just 1 minute. Only two people from our team had their speeches added; the rest were completely cut. In reality, everyone on the team had spoken and shared an opinion. Even though I had specifically mentioned that everyone would share their personal thoughts, and this was captured on video. But the published video was heavily cut. This creates unfair competition between films in terms of visibility.

Additionally, we did a very interesting presentation before our screening. We sent one of our actors to the stage to give the pre-screening speech without stating whether he was the director or not. Just as we demanded in the film, we wanted the audience not to accept this immediately but to question it. Then, during the Q&A, we dressed the actual director (me) in a costume, like a character from the film. Our goal was to rescue the audience from becoming passive in their seats and force them to remain active and skeptical. We didn’t want to leave the film’s questioning nature only on the screen; we dragged it into the theater, right into the audience’s lap, to continue the film’s debate with the audience in the reality of the room. We handed out a “Wedding Intention Notebook” and collected written comments from the viewers.

It was a colorful, different experiment, something you won’t easily find in Turkish festivals. But it found zero traction on the festival’s social media. We were completely ignored. Festivals shouldn’t hide differences; they should put them in the spotlight.

6. Jury decisions are not transparent:

Why do we have to hunt down jury members at the afterparty to find out why a film won an award? The jury could prepare a reasoned “star list” or a comprehensive decision manifesto and publish it openly for the public. This way, the presentations at award ceremonies would become an archival source of reasoning; everything would be gathered in one place, allowing the press, the audience, participants, and, most importantly, future researchers to feed on it. It would also cut off gossip at its rootd

7. There is no award for sound:

In cinema, sound is not an accompanying element to the image; it is a creative narrative tool just as important as the visual. Today, you can make a film without actors, without a camera, without a story; but if you make a film without sound, it will be incomplete. Technical awards like Sound Design must take their place right next to the festival’s biggest awards. This is a crucial step to bring invisible creators to the stage and elevate cinema.

8. There is no feedback culture:

If we hadn’t won an award, if I hadn’t said “criticism mechanisms must be established” on stage, and if the festival administration hadn’t personally requested it, my thoughts would never have reached them. Feedback shouldn’t be left to chance. The festival must build its own critique mechanism; it should create a system at the end of the event where film crews are asked about shortcomings in a free environment. It would also be beneficial to ask the festival staff for their feedback as well.

9. The press at the festival lacked diversity:

It may not be the festival’s responsibility, but there is a clear reality: It felt like all the reporters thought the exact same way. How do we understand this? One of our actors is actually a member of the press in the film industry by profession. While our entire crew was mercilessly criticized, this specific actor didn’t receive a single critique and instead received exaggerated praise. This happened despite the fact that there were other actors in our film who were much more prominent, delivered excellent performances, and one of whom was even awarded in the competition. This isn’t a result that can be ignored; it is blatant favoritism. The solution: The festival must take steps to make room for press members from diverse viewpoints and backgrounds, encourage every perspective to take part, and never fear the clash of different opinions.

10. A very minor detail, but I must mention it:

On the award night, the festival used safety pins to attach the title cards to the seats. When I sat down, that pin snagged the threads of my jacket and damaged it. It would be much better for the festival to use a fabric-friendly alternative instead of pins to secure the name cards.

PART II: WHAT NEEDS TO BE MAINTAINED?

1. Sound, Image, and Venues

Why does a filmmaker travel from festival to festival? From my perspective: to experience that physical manifestation they could never build with their own resources, to present their film to the audience on a giant screen with quality. The comfort of Adana’s theaters, the brightness of the screens, and the sound systems were, in a word, fantastic. We watched our film in its absolute best version. The festival shines like a star in this regard.

2. Accommodation

The accommodation at HiltonSA hotel created a wonderful ecosystem where filmmakers and guests could come together and mingle in the lobby. Including dinners with the accommodation was a thoughtful and highly accurate detail. (A minor suggestion: for intra-crew interaction and communication, it would be much better if all members of a film crew were placed on the same floor, as floors cannot be accessed without a room card).

3. Urban Transportation

The transportation network between the screening venues and the hotel worked like clockwork. The vehicles were varied, and our transport was provided without a single glitch or delay.

4. Events and Tone of Communication

The event we attended as a crew, tracing the route of Yilmaz Guney’s film Hope (shot in Adana), was a brilliant idea. They didn’t trap us in a sterile camp between the hotel and the cinema. We mixed with the city and learned about Adana interactively. The festival should multiply these kinds of field events to spread the festival spirit throughout the city (we gave our necessary feedback directly to the staff member organizing the event on the spot).

Additionally, the communication tone of all the staff members who took care of us was incredibly warm and respectful.

5. The Pre-Jury and the Jury Taking Initiative

This was the aspect of Adana that surprised me the most this year. Our film, Marriage A-la-Mode, is produced with no funds, no sponsors. We never knocked on the doors of co-production markets or script workshops. It was entirely self-financed. It defies industry norms, could be considered an “anti-film” in terms of content and style, and actively challenges the viewer. The pre-jury saw this challenge, added the film to the selection, and passed the ball to the main jury. The main jury took that pass and scored a goal with the Promising Actress and Special Jury prizes.

To award a film that audiences reacted to by walking out, and that SIYAD (Cinema Writers Association) declared the “worst film” by giving it 1.5 points, requires massive courage. For the jury to put everything aside and just see the film on the screen is a direct tribute to the cinematic quality and depth of the work, rather than the “non-cinematic industry dynamics” we all critique and suffer from. With this decision, Adana gave filmmakers an invaluable message: “Create whatever you want freely; we will make space for unconventional works.”

(I should also note: I didn’t personally know anyone on the jury. I only remembered Erdem Tepegoz because he attended a screening of my previous film, A Hero of Our Time (2023), and asked me a question during the Q&A. We had a brief chat back then, and I saw him here for the first time in years. That is all.)

A Footnote from Cinema History: The 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Michelangelo Antonioni’s film L’Avventura makes its premiere. Because it lacks a conventional plot, the audience and critics boo the film so harshly that Antonioni and Monica Vitti leave the hall (with Vitti in tears). However, the visionary Cannes jury recognizes the film’s courage, awards it the “Special Jury Prize” (just as happened in Adana with Marriage A-la-Mode). Today, L’Avventura is regarded as one of the milestones of modern cinema and is taught in film schools.

Rate Your Festival

I built this 10-point scorecard to evaluate the quality of a film festival through the eyes of participating crews.

Use the form below to rate your latest festival experience, then click the button to get the verdict.

(You can find this form in the Tools section along with other evaluation forms I designed.)

Here is what the final scores mean:

8 – 10 Points – The Real Deal: They respect the art and the artist. You can trust them.

5 – 7 Points – The Mixed Bag: Good intentions, clumsy execution. Go if you can keep your expectations strictly managed.

0 – 4 Points – The Time Sink: A complete disservice to your hard work. They just want your film to fill a time slot. Submitting here is a drain on your energy and your budget. Save your film. Hard pass.

Here are my latest festival ratings:

And lastly, here are our award speeches:

By the way, we are going to release the whole festival and the Q&A as a documentary on our YouTube channel, though it will obviously take a bit of time to put together.