Barış Atay

Damat Kogusu (Groom's Block) is slang in Turkey for prison sections holding those accused of serious sex crimes. The film's story and characters are drawn from everyday life. In the Groom's Block, the guards and prison governor manipulate tensions, as prisoners push each other to the edge of existence. We experience the tension and paradox of a violent prison and justice systems reflecting the shifting moral norms and structure of Turkish society. The jailed and jailers enforce violent justice daily, expressing in their lives a society confronted with its need to hide from itself, in desperate denial of its cruel contradictions.

In 1981, iconic Turkish film director escapes jail to France, his last work re-creating with other exiles the prison lives they left behind.

Film from Baris Atay

An ordinary day in the megacity of Istanbul: Ten-year-old Cemo sells paper tissues in the streets, Hayat is controlled by her husband and transsexual Ebru sells her body. All three have a secret love and they do everything that satisfies their longing, if only for a moment. An authentic, delicate and unsettling story about love and death and the Turkish society at the beginning of the 21st century.

In the course of a day in Istanbul, five individuals cross paths and change each others' lives in unexpected ways.