Part 2 of 2. If you haven’t read Part 1, start there.
The censorship loophole didn’t close all at once.
In 2017, a Turkish short was pulled from the !f program under pressure from the Ministry of Culture. Its director was threatened. We did not make the reason public at the time for their safety. The Last Schnitzel, a short sci-fi comedy, was the first time I realized that the loophole was closing, and fast. !f you want to see why they would ban a short sci-fi comedy from screening at a festival, it’s streaming on IndieFlix.
In 2018, CGV Mars Entertainment Group — the Korean-owned conglomerate that had acquired AFM Cinemas over successive years and with it the rights to the festival brand — quietly dismissed Serra and Pelin. No justification. No transition. The entire team was replaced from top to bottom.
A group of filmmakers, musicians, artists, and writers who called themselves “!f People” launched a petition. They asked CGV Mars to hand the festival over to a foundation that could protect its spirit. CGV Mars issued a statement saying they would preserve the !f spirit. They then copied the language of the petition and put it on the festival’s website as a manifesto.
The festival ran one more edition under new management in 2019. It was unsuccessful. Then the pandemic arrived, and the festival — which had spent a decade pioneering online screening technology — used none of it. The last public statement from the official !f account was made on January 21, 2021. The festival has not happened since.
The spirit outlived the institution. The institution could not be revived without the people who built it.
Now here’s the part that is almost too on-the-nose to be real.
In November 2024, MUBI — the streaming platform founded by a Turkish entrepreneur, the same company that had been !f’s technology partner for its pioneering live-streaming project years earlier — planned a film festival in Istanbul. The opening film was Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, starring Daniel Craig.
Hours before the festival was set to begin — it was sold out — local authorities sent a notification banning the film. The reason given: “provocative content that would endanger public peace.”
MUBI cancelled the entire festival.
The same city. A different decade. The loophole is closed.
I sat with that for a long time before I knew what to do with it. I now know that oppressive, autocratic, corrupt governments will attack media and censor expression from top to bottom, all the way down to the final loophole. That’s another article. On this one, here’s what I’ve landed on — for filmmakers specifically:
On niche and identity-based festivals: !f programmed dissidence — queer films, Kurdish films, films banned in their own countries, films that documented protests the government wished had never happened. What those films shared was not a label but a refusal. And the audiences that showed up understood that. That’s the spirit worth looking for when you’re choosing where to submit your work. The queer festival circuit — Outfest (rip, but hope it comes back), Inside Out, Frameline, NewFest, KASHISH — is something more than a consolation prize. It is often where your film will have its most meaningful life. And in Turkey, KuirFest in Ankara keeps trying, keeps showing up, in conditions that make !f’s loophole era look easy. That kind of persistence is worth supporting.
On a festival’s identity: !f knew its audience because it spent seventeen years building a conversation with them. That’s why “!f film” became a concept with meaning. When you’re choosing which festivals to submit to, look for that — festivals with a genuine curatorial point of view, not just a submission portal. Those are the places your film will be seen, not just screened.
As a filmmaker, when you attend a smaller festival that’s based on a real spirit and genuine community, you’ll have experiences and conversations and make connections that could be life-changing. Or that will nourish you in ways you can’t imagine. When Adam Curtis visited !f, he said, “What’s happening at this festival really matters,” and that is true.
On programmers: Serra and Pelin built something extraordinary. They also worked within the constraints of a corporate sponsor, navigated acquisitions, and ultimately had no legal protection when the brand rights were taken from them. Programmers you admire are often operating within structures they don’t fully control. That’s worth understanding when you receive a rejection — or an acceptance.
On freedom: !f existed because of a legal loophole. When that loophole matters, it really matters. The political conditions that allow certain films to screen in certain places are not permanent. If you make politically engaged work or work about marginalized communities, the festival circuit is something more than a marketing exercise. Sometimes it’s the only way that the film will be seen. Treat it accordingly.
I have been living in self-imposed exile for the better part of a decade now — first New Orleans, now Los Angeles. It is the kind of exile James Baldwin might have recognized: not forced out exactly, but unable to fully return either. The city I left behind has become harder to recognize. The Istanbul that filled warehouses every February, that put filmmakers and audiences in the same room and let something happen — I have to work to remember it clearly now.
But I do remember it. And I remember what it felt like to be inside it.
That’s what I want for every filmmaker reading this: not just to get into a festival, but to find the one that makes you feel like you belong somewhere. Those festivals exist. They are worth fighting for. And when they disappear — and some of them will — it matters that we say so.
More soon.
— Zaf
This piece would not exist without the people who built !f and let me be part of it. Serra, Pelin, Onur, Uğur, Mustafa, Candan, Zeki, İmre, Ulaş, İlke, Köken, Ece, İzdeş, Zeynep, Uluç, Dilek, Sinan, Ahmet — and many more !f people I can’t name here but carry with me.
A special thank you to Uğurhan Topçuoğlu, whose 2023 master’s thesis “Community Beyond the Screen: ‘!f People’ of the !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival” was an invaluable companion in writing this. I lived through !f; Uğurhan went back, excavated it, and offered something I couldn’t have written myself. Very !f of them.
For Immediate Release is a newsletter about the film festival world — from both sides of the table. If this resonated, share it with a filmmaker who needs to read it.
If you want to go deeper on how to navigate the festival world — strategy, submissions, programming decisions, all of it — I’m writing a guide. Pre-order it here.
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