Turkish Festival Promises $320,000 Prize Purse in Competition

MOSCOW — One of the world’s richest movie event prize purses — totaling more than $320,000 — was made public Saturday when Turkey’s 50th International Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, which opens Oct. 4, announced its national competition line-up.

The 10 films selected for the national competition, from a field of 62 under consideration, will be eligible for some of the festival circuit’s biggest prizes, including 350,000 Turkish Lire (around $172,000) for best film; $49,000 for best first feature; $27,000 for best director; and $17,000 for best screenplay.

STORY: Turkey Nominates ‘The Butterfly’s Dream’ in Oscars Foreign Language Category 

There is $45,000 available in total for excellent cinematography, music and documentary filmmaking. For best short $7,000 is earmarked and $2,500 for best first documentary.

The international line up was announced earlier this month; titles include Ari Folman’s The Congress, starring Robin Wright, and Thai director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s 36, which recently won the New Currents Award at the Busan Film Festival.

Renowned as a festival that gives lavish hospitality to its guests, with a closing ceremony held in a Roman Ampitheater, guest of honor this year is Oscar-winning Iranian director of A Separation, Asghar Farhadi.

The director and actor Ali Mustafa will be attending the screening of his latest work Le Passé, for which  Berenice Bejo won a best leading actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.

The national feature jury includes chair, actress Turkan Soray and directors, Reis Celik and Umit Unal, Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou, producer Sukru Avsar and actor Mahir Gunsiray.

The festival runs October 4-11, 2013.

The Turkish films selected to compete for the Golden Orange Award are:

Ferit Karahan’s Cennetten Kovulmak (The Fall From Heaven)

Ali Kemal Cinar’s Kisa Film (Short Film)

Ramin Martin’s Kusursuzlar (Flawless Life)

Serdar Temizkan’s Kutsal Bir Gun (A Holy Day)

Zeynep Dadak and Merve Kayan’s Mavi Dalga (Blue Wave)

Omer Leventoglu’s Mavi Ring (Blue Ring)

Atalay Tasdikan’s Meryem

Mehmet Bahadir Er and Maryna Er Gorbach’s Sev Beni (Love Me)

Alpgiray Ugurlu’s Uvertur (Prelude)

Nihat Seven’s Uzun Yol (The Long Way Home)?