Korkut Ata Turkish World Film Festival has revealed itself as the exciting condition of a journey that started many years ago and woven knot by knot. Within the framework of the activities of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Cultural Affairs between 1998-2002, Turkic World Film Days, organized three times under the leadership of director Prof. Tevfik İsmai- lov, Turquoise Film Days among 2013 Eskişehir Turkic World Capital of Culture programs, and Developing Countries Film Festival in 2014, which included D-8 and ECO countries’ cinemas in which the Turkic world countries are members. The Festival literally rose to an enhanced size to match its title. Selected films from the Turkic world, which emerged independently, autonomously or as a region from the wide geography where Turkish and its dialects are spoken, meet the audience with competitions, special sections, panels and exhibitions.

Following the motto of Ismail Gaspirali, “Unity in Language, Idea, Work”, the festival will be repeated every year after the end of the festival in the city chosen as the Cultural Capital of the Turkic World, from the Sakha Republic to Kazakhstan, Moldova/ Gagauz Place, from Tatarstan to Uzbekistan, Iraq, and Hungary as an observer member of the Turkic Council. It aims to reach the hearts of the audience in a very colorful cultural spectrum, appealing to the world of adults and children, with historical and modern fiction, documentary and animation films about our common culture, which finds a place in a wide geography. The “Towards the Turkic World Cinema Cooperation Organization” meeting, which came to the agenda with the possibility of establishment of the Joint Cinema Fund at the 3rd National Culture Council organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2017, and which will officially work on cinema cooperation in every field between the countries that make up the Turkic world, is one of the concrete outputs of the festival.

We hope that starting from next year, the festival will reach a level that will feed and develop the cinema culture even more efficiently, that the younger generations will adopt the understanding that Turkish cinema is a natural part of the Turkic World cinema, and that they will be able to recognize the signs of which cultural codes can be used to create Turkish cinema. We would like to thank all the organizations that contributed to our event, especially the General Directorate of Cinema of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.