Inside The Jury

I have always been on the evaluated side when it comes to film festivals. But recently, I got to flip the role as I served as a jury member in a short film competition. This was something I wanted to try for a while, to see how it feels from the other side. Even better, I could finally put some of my principles into practice: the standards I have always wished other evaluators would follow.

Let me first explain how I was invited for the role. Last year, my film A Hero of Our Time (2023) won the Best First Film Award at the Bosphorus Film Festival in Istanbul, Turkey. So, because of that win, they invited me back to be on the jury this year for short films. I should mention that I didn’t know anyone there last year, no festival insiders, no pre-selectors, and no jury members. All I did was fill out the submission form, and everything else followed. So, this offer came to me in an organic (and fair) way.

“Why Didn’t You Like My Film?”

Here’s what I think about evaluating films in the competitions:

I am uncertain about how valid it is to judge art through competition. But I know that film competitions often leave me feeling uneasy whether I win or lose them. They are not just about who gets the spotlight, they are also about who gets left in the shadows. They can easily amplify certain voices and styles while silencing others. But, unfortunately, we haven’t found a better way to appreciate films professionally or artistically, so maybe we should work on improving them instead of disregarding them.

To me, it doesn’t really matter whether I personally like any of the 20 films that someone else has selected. Because what really matters is the cinematic understanding and curatorial approach of the person or the group who pre-selected them. So, the real task was already completed before I even got involved as a jury. My role was just filtering: to identify candidates for the awards and later discuss them in detail with the other jury members.

To do that, I needed to filter through the films based on my cinematic perspective so that I could identify those that stand out and bring them for discussion. Again, the films I chose might not be the types I really like, as there are only a limited number of films to consider. My enjoyment would only be relevant if I were to select all the films myself from the start. But, of course, this is still acceptable in the context of competition.

“How Deep Is Your Love?”

First of all, I have considered artistic depth, the concept I have discussed in this blog before. This refers to the depth of a filmmaker’s perspective on life or the universe (of course, according to my understanding). Artistic depth can be measured on a scale: the higher the number, the deeper the perspective. As the depth increases, I find that, as an audience (or evaluator), I connect with the film on a more profound level.

Here is the the scale:

1- Seeing: Gazing at the world around.

2- Connecting: Interconnecting societal threads, being part of activism, politics, and community pulse.

3- Empathizing: Inspecting the human culture, identity dilemmas, and struggles of societies.

4- Reflecting: Focusing on intimate experiences, exploring existential and individual dimensions.

5- Encompassing: Accessing universal human emotions and experiences, addressing every human being across time.

6- Transcending: Crossing beyond human boundaries, channeling a divine essence into an artistic cosmos.

In my evaluation, I considered each depth as a point based on its order. For instance, depth 4 will equal 4 points. And each film can only occupy one place on the scale because I see these depths as hierarchical (yes, I am very uncompromising on this).

* Update for Artistic Depth

One of the competitors reached out to ask about my scale, so I shared a bit more about it. I think it might be helpful to share it here as well.

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The first issue was whether it would be appropriate to apply my scale to films of different forms, such as lengths or styles, especially for short films. As I mentioned above, the real problem is the ethics that put a work of art into the competition. However, if we are going to compare them anyway, I would prefer to focus on their artistic perspectives at first rather than their forms. Okay, this may set a high or very demanding standard for the films in the selection, but since I assume each one is a work of art, I believe I give them the highest level of importance. I also believe that this approach is fair in considering non-industrial talents, as it does not distinguish between professional and amateur aspects at this stage.

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The other issue is about how I decide the place of films on this scale. Simply, I must experience the depth in a flesh-and-blood manner. I don’t like to think of films as a way to communicate with various symbols and metaphors. The ideas I mentioned in the scale shouldn’t be told to the audience, they should be experienced, just like we experience them in real life. For example, if a universal theme is present as a metaphor, it doesn’t justify giving it a fifth depth.

I look at depth from a cinematic perspective. Cinematic means making the audience experience a feeling or a situation directly, rather than just conveying the concept of it. A film should give the audience a role as either an observer or a participant. Much like in life, we either witness things by observing them or we become players and experience them firsthand. The filmmaker’s perspective should be reflected in this type of audiovisual experience, without relying on metaphors, symbols, concepts, titles, intertitles, or literary voiceovers. So, I evaluated such experience in terms of its equivalent on the scale.

What I focused on was the medium of cinema itself. To me, everything else is just applications that turn cinema into a communication tool, which I don’t sign up for. When you look at it from this perspective, you will see that I do not use the word “story” anywhere in my evaluation. Because I don’t see cinema as a tool for “telling” stories either. To me, cinema is the art of providing an audiovisual experience. Sometimes, there might be a story in this experience, and sometimes there might not, but what matters is the experience itself.

All or Nothing

I am not a tolerant audience. Sometimes, a tiny detail can turn me off from a film completely. However, in the spirit of competition, I focused on the most important aspects and used them as my guide for another evaluation method. I define four black-or-white issues that are either present in a film or are not, according to my view:

1. Does the film take risks with its audiovisual choices and push boundaries to contribute to the cinematic evolution?

Here, I don’t refer to films that label themselves as experimental by mixing unrelated elements to appear different and complex on the surface. To me, it is a completely conventional way of making experimental films. Instead, I refer to the transformative use of audiovisual choices in a bold manner that focuses on image, sound, and rhythm to add a new vocabulary to an already existing cinematic language.

2. Does the film create a re-mix that reflects the filmmaker’s distinctive signature?

This is about how the director’s audiovisual style becomes a reflection of a personality, or vice versa.

3. Does the film build a world I can believe in?

I focus on whether I can believe in the film’s own world. Everything in the mise en scène, including acting and production design, serves this purpose. Surely, it’s not about realism. Sometimes a film can reflect the world we live in, while at other times it can be something unrealistic. Both would be acceptable to me as long as I believe in it. You can think of Roy Andersson’s films, they are not realistic, but their worlds draw me in.

4. Is the filmmaker sincere?

I sense that some filmmakers exploit themes and subjects to take advantage of trends, funding, and awards. They often have a strong (and trendy) socio-political stance or message or a thesis that can be simply stated in a sentence rather than being experienced in a film. Additionally, some of them tend to use overused topics without creating a broader or deeper perspective on them just to appeal to a specific audience’s (or community’s) sensitivities or preferences. I find it difficult to connect with a film when I sense such approaches.

So, in this evaluation, I assigned 1 point for each of these four questions. If the film gives a positive answer to a question (of course, according to my view), it earns 1 point. If it gives a negative answer, it earns nothing.

It’s Not About Rating

So, if all these conditions are met, a film could theoretically receive 10 points, but practically a maximum of 9 points (since it is not possible to reach the sixth artistic depth for a film, it is just an ideal position to aspire to). I converted this system into an Excel table to easily filter my own award candidates. Of course, this filtering is not intended to be objective. It’s more about conveying my subjective approach for each film to the other jury members for further discussion, as well as to the competitors after the award is announced.

So, it is not a tool for rating, rather, it is made to reflect my perspective effectively and to improve communication and transparency.

Here are the tables:

Dealing with Democracy and Regulations

I presented the highest scorers as award candidates to the other jury members, and through discussions, the three of us reached a consensus and selected the awards. In fact, their candidates almost overlapped with mine, so I even didn’t push for minor differences. We agreed on the best films and set the order based on the majority’s preference in the jury.

The problem arose when we had to give out two awards for the national competition, as I had only one strong candidate. Besides that, the Young Talent Award was intended for a young filmmaker. As a result, I did not find any film worthy of that award, so I chose to align with the other jury members’ decision.

I think the jury should have the right not to grant an award in such cases, but unfortunately, the regulations did not allow for this. In fact, it would be good for film festivals to consider this option, as it would help maintain high standards of artistic excellence. If an award with a cash prize is not granted, they could distribute the prize money equally among all selected or awarded films in the competition.

The award-winning films were as follows:

• Ahmet Ulucay Grand Jury Award: Three Keenings
• Best International Short: Punter
• Best National Short: Good Morning Mom
• Istanbul Media Academy Young Talent Award: The Shell

Let me also acknowledge the jury members, Hakan Atalay and Romina Zanon, for their collaboration on this task, the jury coordinator, Zeynep Sevval Esen, for her assistance, and the festival’s artistic director, Enes Erbay, for providing a free and unbiased environment that allowed us to make our decision.

From left to right: Hakan Atalay, Mirac Atabey

Festival Reflections

Just because I was a jury member doesn’t mean I won’t critique the festival. So, here are my reflections.

The Selection

Just like any other festival in the world, this festival also struggles with similar issues, especially regarding true diversity versus what I call controlled diversity. So, there is certainly room for improvement in their selections. In fact, I would object to all the national shorts, but I guess that there weren’t many alternatives in that category to curate a good selection. On the other hand, most of the international shorts come from major festival picks, which sounds impressive at first, but it doesn’t really help us discover and highlight somebody new. It feels like we are following a trend of industry giants. While the selection seems diverse in some aspects, it lacks balanced quality, in other words, it lacks diversity of merit and talent. So spotting the best films was easy for us, which I would definitely prefer to be the opposite.

The Organization

The Festival’s organizational and communicational skills are world-class, and all the events I participated are well-executed. The theaters where I watched the films have good quality. The visuals and posters were aesthetically pleasing. The hospitality was excellent. The team is young, hardworking, and passionate and I can sense that they are willing to improve the festival in future editions.

Festival Blues

It is sad to observe that the festival’s team efforts are not appreciated by most cinema communities, just because of the political environment in Turkey and around the world. Most national cinema communities are indifferent to the event and the international cinema media is also not paying much attention (Who are they? Just look at any regular cinema magazine, website, or social media page, and you’ll see what I mean). This is a discriminatory approach that doesn’t really help anyone. It would be better to listen to their criticism rather than be ignored completely.

Ironically, those cinema communities often make big claims about inclusivity, but they end up boycotting or ignoring such a well-executed event that hosts filmmakers from almost all corners of the world. The main problem is that those communities lack tolerance for organizations that have their own cultural policies and sensitivities, instead, they want to see their own sensitivities reflected everywhere.

Sure, it’s understandable, given the political climate of the world, everyone is just busy canceling each other. But still, I see the team of the Bosphorus Film Festival trying to challenge prejudices against themselves. Okay, I personally don’t support guided cultural or political diversity in cinema, but for anyone seeking that kind of diversity, I claim that the Bosphorus Film Festival is the most inclusive festival in Turkey right now (of course, when compared to others). My experiences over the past two years are just proof of it and I appreciate their efforts.

Okay, that was it. I will conclude with the closing ceremony, where I presented an award (and I hope I practiced what I preached in the video).

By the way, Three Keenings is a film about an actor getting paid to cry at funerals.