A profound portrait of survival set among the mountains of south-eastern Türkiye.

Vakıf, a 60-year-old who was born into a nomadic Kurdish tribe, recounts his life, from a childhood in the mountains through to his imprisonment and torture by Turkish nationalist forces. Using an array of different film stocks, formats and aspect ratios, Aylin Gökmen (Spirits and Rocks: An Azorean Myth, MIFF 2021) sets her subject’s recollections against sun-kissed, naturalist imagery that evokes a free spirit.