Applications for the 3rd Sabancı Foundation Short Film Competition have started and will continue until Nov. 16. Organized to draw attention to social problems through art, the competition will feature the theme of "discrimination," one of the most important issues in the world.

Explaining that they aim to cover a different social problem every year and create awareness, Sabancı Foundation Vice President Zerrin Koyunsağan said, "Discrimination is a multidimensional problem, and every society, unfortunately, faces it in different fields. In many areas, such as employment, education, access to public services and participation in social life, discrimination for different factors like sex, ethnic origin, language and religion can be experienced. For some of these factors, social awareness is higher. For example, discrimination about sex is both revealed with data and improvements are made. On the other hand, there is no official statistics about some issues, such as race and ethnic origin, which are open to the public, and any computation about the discrimination in this field cannot be conducted. However, it is really important to make every kind of discrimination visible in order to find a solution to them. This is why young filmmakers will focus their lenses on discrimination at the short film competition this year. We will contribute to bring this problem forward and to create awareness for it with their creative perspective."

Discrimination still an important social problem

Koyunsağan explained that the discrimination issue can only be solved with the equality principle. This principle is guaranteed through many national and international agreements, particularly with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"The second article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights indicates that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. 2018 is the 70th anniversary of the declaration's acceptance, but discrimination is still an important, social problem in the world. We, as Sabancı Foundation, conduct works so that young and handicapped people can take advantage of equal rights. However, there are some other people who face inequality in the society and we want to make the discrimination visible, as well. We invite young filmmakers to transfer stories in which they witness discrimination to the cinema screen with this competition," she continued.

Increasing interest in the competition

In the first year of the Sabancı Foundation Short Film Competition, which was organized with the theme of "Refugee Women," the number of short film applications was 126. This number tripled in the second competition, which was held with the theme of "Child Workers" and reached 395.

Noting they are happy with this interest, Koyunsağan said, "We received applications from 51 different cities of Turkey and also from Belgium, France and India in the first two years of the competition. The finalist films of the competitions had many successes at national and international festivals. Then, people started to wait for our competition much excitedly. Youth who set their hearts on cinema want to live this experience. We are waiting for new films this year with this excitement."

Strong start for careers of young filmmakers

Drawing attention that the Sabancı Foundation Short Film Competition is an important project for the development of short films in Turkey, the art director of the competition, Zeynep Atakan stated, "The short film competition is a platform which contributes to the development of young artists beyond being a competition. We do not only determine the best three films here. There are also many workshops held at the Short Film Platform meetings. We bring together all contestants and famous figures from Turkey and the world. The contestants both have a chance to learn from masters and benefit from the connections that they get here in their careers. The Short Film Platform, which has been hosting important figures for two years, will also continue its growth from now on. We will host surprise figures in Turkey again this year."

The applications for Sabancı Foundation Short Film Competition will continue until Nov. 16. The films that apply should be five minutes at most and focus on discrimination problems. Films will be evaluated by a pre-festival jury first, and then 10 to 15 films at most will be evaluated again.

The director or producer (at least one of them) of the films should be a Turkish citizen or a citizen of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. A person can apply with more than one film, but the films should not have been screened or awarded before. There should be no feature film of the directors that they shot before, as well.

The winning work which presents the discrimination problem in the best and most creative way, in accordance with the criteria, will receive TL 15,000 ($3,150); second place will get TL 10,000 while third will get TL 5,000.