While movie theaters are being invaded by distribution monopolies and commercial films, the spaces in which independent political films, especially documentaries, can reach audiences are gradually shrinking. As cultural workers, artists, and filmmakers who are troubled by the current world order, we need alternative spaces where we can speak our minds and share our films. Cinemas, most of which have been reclaimed through struggle and whose doors are open to guerrilla-style activities, provide us with such a space of freedom.

At the roundtable meeting, representatives of alternative cinemas from various cities around the world — from Buenos Aires to Dublin and from Belgrade to Prizren — will come together to share their experiences and explore opportunities for curatorial collaboration. As we host this special meeting, which aims to foster networking, global solidarity, and the exchange of films among alternative theaters, we will also pay homage to our then-struggle for the Emek Cinema.

Repressive policies targeting LGBTQI+ people in Türkiye are increasingly and directly threatening trans people's right to life, bodily autonomy, and freedom of expression. Recent restrictions on access to hormone therapy and gender-affirming healthcare have made these violations of rights even more visible.

For trans people, hormone therapy is not a matter of "personal preference"; it is recognized as an essential component of physical, mental, and social well-being. Restricting access to this process is widely understood as a form of political control exercised over bodies and lives. Access to hormones, therefore, is not only a healthcare issue but also a fundamental human rights concern.

In this event, together with the Hormon Hakkım Collective, activists, and grassroots initiatives working in this field, we will discuss the rights violations faced by trans people in Türkiye and the forms of solidarity and collective organizing developed in response. Through the production of reliable information, the sharing of experiences, and the strengthening of solidarity networks, we will explore the possibilities for collective struggle and resistance within an increasingly restricted rights landscape.

As in Türkiye, femicide in Mexico continues as a form of structural violence produced by the patriarchal system. Policies of impunity, the failure to effectively enforce laws, and male-dominated state practices all play a decisive role in perpetuating violence against women. In response, feminist movements have been fighting for years not only to defend women's right to live, but also to challenge the inequalities and violence produced by the patriarchal capitalist system.

In this event, Ni Una Más / Not One More director Julia Hollander will join activists from Kadın Cinayetlerine Karşı Feministler (Feminists Against Femicide). Drawing on the film's origins and production process, we will discuss the struggle against femicide in Mexico and the ongoing feminist resistance to male violence in Türkiye. Together, we will explore why femicide must be understood not as a series of isolated incidents but as a political issue, and reflect on the possibilities for transnational feminist solidarity and collective resistance.

This is the story of "Rocío" (1980), a film that was banned before its release, with its copies confiscated and its scenes cut out — and of the deep wounds inflicted by censorship. Following the ban, Andalusian director Fernando Ruiz Vergara was unable to make another film. He moved to Portugal, where he lived in exile and isolation until his death. Despite trying to bring many projects to life and remaining active in film collectives, his efforts were fruitless. When he died in 2011, he left behind countless unfinished screenplays and film drafts. ("Resistance Reels" tells the story of this unfinished work.)

This presentation, prepared by filmmakers and researcher scholars Concha Barquero and Alejandro Alvarado, aims to guide the audience through various versions of "Rocío", Vergara's struggle against censorship, and his latent filmography. It enables us to create narratives about the director's potential through various traces — images, documents, and even gaps. This is similar to "Otelo a presidente", a project about the unsuccessful political vision of Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, the famous leader of the Carnation Revolution, who sought to establish a participatory democracy in Portugal — a project that also aborted due to lack of financing. Both failed projects, one political and one cinematic, bring us back to the reality of Southern Europe bound to an extractive economic model based on tourism.

This performative lecture, conceived by the duo as a tribute to Vergara, is now sadly being held as a memorial event for Concha Barquero, presented by her partner Alejandro Alvarado.

Portuguese documentary filmmaker and artist Susana de Sousa Dias, who has been producing work for a quarter of a century, often draws upon the dialectic of history and memory in her work. While using archival documents in her films, she also questions their presumed innocence and objectivity. In "48," a classic of documentary cinema, she combines portrait photographs of political prisoners unearthed from state dictatorship archives with the oral testimonies of those in the photographs, demonstrating that archival records can be used against those who produced them, thereby reversing their original function.

During the Master Class, along with excerpts from her films, De Sousa Dias — the festival's Guest of Honour, with five of her films featured in the programme — will discuss the relationship between documentary cinema and memory, the ways in which images shape our understanding of the past while continuing to act upon the present, and the changing status of archival images in the age of AI. The class will include excerpts from her films.

In this special gathering, we meet with the Istanbul People's Climate Summit (PCS) Assembly to discuss the PCS Beyond COP 31, exploring alternatives inspired by the documentary.

The 31st Conference of the Parties (COP), the world's largest climate summit, will be held in Türkiye this year. As past experience has shown, these summits generally result in decisions taken by states in line with the interests of large corporations, while the peoples, local communities, and defenders of life directly affected by the climate crisis are always excluded from these processes. For this reason, those most affected by the climate crisis — workers, peasants, urban dwellers, women, LGBTI+ individuals, animal and ecology activists, academics, and international peoples — are working intensively to organize a People's Climate Summit (PCS) as an alternative to COP31. We gather with the Istanbul PCS Assembly, one of the organizing bodies, to discuss the preparations for the summit to be held in Antalya in November parallel to COP31, share experiences, and voice the demand for climate justice rising from below. Before the forum, we will watch together an inspiring documentary about the Buzuruna Juzuruna (Our Seeds Are Our Roots) initiative, which fights for sustainable agriculture in Lebanon.