The Festival on Wheels has hit the road for its 27th edition to unite cinema-goers with a rich selection of movies ranging from classics to world cinema, short films and Turkish productions under the categories of "World Cinema," "Short is Good" and "Türkiye 2022."

Starting in Ankara, the festival will travel to Sinop and Kastamonu in northern Türkiye.

As part of the "Türkiye 2022" section, brand new films that were already presented and awarded at national and international film festivals will be shown. The selection consists of Belmin Söylemez’s "Mirror Mirror" ("Ayna Ayna"), Ümran Safter's "Guilt" ("Kabahat"), Selcen Ergun's "Snow and the Bear" ("Kar ve Ayı"), Özcan Alper's "Black Night" ("Karanlık Gece"), Emin Alper’s "Burning Days" ("Kurak Günler") and Çiğdem Sezgin's "Suna."

9 films,14 countries

As in previous years, the "World Cinema" section of the 27th Festival on Wheels brings audiences a hand-picked selection of the latest films that have been screened, won awards and made a splash at premier international festivals. The "World Cinema" section is supported by the U.S., Belgian, Danish, Irish, Spanish, Israeli and Polish Embassies and the Goethe Institut Ankara.

Among them, Park Chan-wook’s "Decision to Leave," which picked up the Best Director Award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, will be screened, telling the story of a detective who falls in love with the suspect in a murder case he is investigating.

Awarded Best European Film Audience Award at San Sebastian, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s "The Beasts" explores the aggression shown by villagers toward a couple who move to the countryside to be close to nature.

In Anna Jadowska’s "Woman On The Roof," veteran Polish actress and Tribeca winner Dorota Pomykala plunges the viewer into psychological depths in her deftly nuanced portrait of a 60-year-old, who tries to rob a bank with a kitchen knife.

In the idiosyncratic German tragicomedy "The Ordinaries," which received Munich Film Festival’s German Cinema New Talent Award, Sophie Linnenbaum creates a high-concept, meta-cinema world that uses the process of filmmaking to deconstruct the power of the narratives and how they determine our thoughts and actions.

Patricio Guzman’s documentary, "My Imaginary Country," showcases the protests that exploded onto the streets of Chile’s capital Santiago in 2019 as the population demanded more democracy and social equality in education, health care and job opportunities.

Jake Paltrow’s "June Zero" witnesses the execution of Adolf Eichmann in an emotional public trial. This unique drama offers a distinctive look at the events preceding Eichmann’s execution. Told in a triptych, referring to three closely related or contrasting themes, the film examines the event from three different perspectives: 13-year-old Libyan immigrant David, who claims to have worked on the oven where Eichmann’s corpse was incinerated, Hayim, a Moroccan guard assigned to Eichmann’s jail cell, and Micha, a Polish Holocaust survivor who became the chief interrogator at the trial.

In "The Quiet Girl," which picked up the Best Feature and the Special Mention of the Children’s Jury in the Generation Kplus section of the Berlinale, among others, director Colm Barrett portrays a quiet, neglected girl sent to stay with distant relatives for the summer and the bond she slowly begins to forge with them.

In his Cannes Grand Prix winner, "Close," Lukas Dhont highlights the importance and precarity of childhood friendships.

Martin Boulocq’s Tribeca Best Screenplay winner, "The Visitor," offers a thoughtful reflection on the increasingly dominant presence of Evangelism in Latin America and the new forms of ideological dependence guiding Bolivian society.

'Endangered'

The 27th edition of the Festival on Wheels will present three films in the "Endangered" section of the program that focuses on press freedom. The featured films address the problems faced by the independent press in different countries and their impact on democratic regimes. This section is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Türkiye.

Directed by Alan J. Pakula, "All the President’s Men" takes up the legendary Watergate investigation by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

"The Killing of a Journalist," supported by the U.S. and Danish Embassies, is one of the most talked about documentaries of 2022, exploring the murder of Jan Kuciak, an investigative journalist whose work ruffled politicians, and his fiancee. The 2018 killing has since paved the way to a reshaping of politics in Slovakia and exposed one of the European Union’s most far-reaching corruption scandals.

"A Thousand Cuts," the 2020 documentary from award-winning Asian-American director Ramona S. Diaz, follows the story of journalist Maria Ressa in her crusade against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on the press. Winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize and International Hrant Dink Award, Ressa has spent years championing the freedom of the press in challenging political conditions and at great personal risk.

'Speaking Up!'

Another of the festival’s notable sections, "Speaking Up!," brings together two impressive productions that deal with freedom of thought and expression.

The section includes Martin Ritt’s 1976 drama, "The Front," which focuses on the McCarthy-era witch hunt that dogged the American entertainment industry. Starring Woody Allen alongside a cast of largely "blacklisted" Hollywood actors, the film casts a critical eye on Hollywood history and, as well as being nominated for Academy, BAFTA and Golden Globe Awards, featured among the National Board of Review Top 10 Films of 1976.

Turning to Tommy Walker and Ross Hockrow’s 2022 documentary "Kaepernick & America," the film examines the brief history of taking the knee, a symbolic gesture that was initiated single-handedly by star American football player Colin Kaepernick when he kneeled during the national anthem in silent protest against racialism in the U.S.

'Women Pioneers'

The program will also present audiences with a 79-minute version of the 1921 film "Just Around the Corner" in the section. Only two incomplete copies were known to exist in film archives, but after a lot painstaking work, the film was made up to its current 79-minute version.

Godard: On Love-Death

This year saw the death of French-Swiss cinema legend Jean-Luc Godard who, despite being from the same generation, never got to meet the centenarian writer-director Ebrahim Golestan. However, the two filmmakers are brought together in the documentary "See You Friday, Robinson."