Under the title Cinema Under Siege, this first series explores the risks filmmakers face under political regimes that monitor, censor, and suppress dissent—often at great personal cost, from legal persecution to exile. How do filmmakers navigate these threats while continuing to tell urgent stories?

The series opens with Seen Unseen: An Anthology of (Auto)Censorship, a bold reflection on artistic repression and the fight to keep telling urgent stories. Revisiting the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey, the collection of six short films weaves together public and personal archives into a powerful portrait of resistance.

At a time when the country is witnessing its largest wave of anti-authoritarian protest since Gezi—and the government is responding with escalating violence, surveillance, and suppression—Seen Unseen boldly highlights the essential role of filmmakers and artistic freedom in increasingly repressive political climates. 

After the screening, join artistic director Fırat Yücel and contributing filmmaker belit sağ for a conversation moderated by Nadica Denić. 

Speakers

Fırat Yücel is one of the co-founders of Altyazı Monthly Cinema Magazine. Currently, he’s working as the editor of Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema, focusing on freedom of expression in filmmaking. In addition to being a critic, he continues his documentary practice as a film editor and director. He’s a fellow at BAK (basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht) ‘Fellowship for Situated Practice 2023/2024’.  

belit sağ (she/they) is a visual artist, educator, and researcher. She studied mathematics, audiovisual arts, and comparative literature. Their research-based artistic moving image practice is rooted in video-activist groups in Turkey. She was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam) and the International Studio and Curatorial Program (NYC).  

Nadica Denić is a film scholar and curator focused on the entanglement of film and contemporary political developments in Europe and beyond. She works as a Lecturer in Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), where she has also completed her PhD in 2024 on the ethics of contemporary first-person films about migration.