Women raise their voice in Turkey 

It is a cool, rainy early evening in Istanbul, and the most famous shopping street in the Turkish metropolis – Istiklal Caddesi – steamer of moisture.

Even being a street that never sleeps and is always filled with people, it is busier than usual. The narrow passageway is filled to the brim with a huge flock of women – noisy and bubbly – blowing whistles and banging drums where they celebrate 8. March: International Women's Day.

Violence against Turkish women. In a country where religious fundamentalism and an authoritarian regime are on the rise, the regime's attachment to right-wing populist President Reccep Tayyio Erdogan seized the grip of a failed military coup in 2016, shutting down liberals in the media, academia and the judiciary. The annual display of feminist solidarity in the crowd gathering near Taksim Square before flowing down to the Genovese Galata Tower from the 15. century, is a powerful symbol for those who understand that the country is in a critical time.

According to Bianet – a Turkish website that monitors media reports of violence perpetrated by men – at least 290 women were killed by men in the country in 2017. In addition, 22 girls and 34 men who were nearby when some of the incidents happened were also left dead. A total of 101 women were raped and 376 girls were sexually abused. At least 417 women were harmed by violence committed by men in 2017.

"Strong and beautiful." For women with modern, liberal and liberated attitudes in today's Turkey, the women's march is one of the few opportunities for public expression. Initially, men are not welcome at the annual event, but among the tens of thousands who gathered this year, there were plenty of men who supported their female friends, partners and relatives. Although direct gay and LGTB demonstrations in the public space are likely to be cut down quickly by the Republic's militarized police – who are heavily armed to see everywhere in Istanbul's streets, with armored vehicles parked at strategic junctions – 8 included. march train rainbow colored posters, signs and slogans.

As the global gender balance is corrected, we can expect more documentaries of this type.

They are safe because they are so many, noisy, but well-behaved. The women who flock to Istiklal Caddesi wear posters that include a drawing of an erect penis along with a statement in English: "Does this give you great rights?"

Another – also with English text – shows a happy, half-naked young woman with bare breasts and long, black hair flowing down her back as she holds a flower high raised under the words "Strong and Beautiful".

Others carry pictures of some of the women who have been violently killed in recent years, while male street sellers – who are never late to record what's going on in Istanbul – zigzag through the crowd and sell whistles, rattles and headbands with feminist slogans.

Women films in Turkey. The feminist force demonstration came just a few days before the opening of Turkey's 16^th International Filmmor Women's Film Festival on Wheels. It has been organized since 2003, and is now receiving support from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and from international cultural and diplomatic institutions such as the Institut Français, the Goethe Institute and the Dutch and US consulates. The festival opened 10. March, before moving to cities around the country – including Antalya, Bodrum, Izmir, Mersin, Diyarbakir, Adana and Trabzon. In collaboration with various national and regional solidarity organizations for women, Filmmor combines screenings and discussions of themes from the program, which this year included "Our Bodies Are Ours," "Women Are Everywhere" and "Time's up: Sexual Harassment in the Film Industry."

Alin Tasciyan, a film critic, writer and member of the women's collective organizing the festival, says: "The film's mother aims to show the productivity, creativity and diversity of women's films." By putting the festival "on wheels" and bringing it around the country, it can "reach a diverse audience and show solidarity with the women's movements that invite us".

With a program that combines feature films, documentaries, short films and experimental films, there is something for everyone with feminist attitudes, whether they are obvious or more subtle.

People, faces and places. In his gently subversive full-length documentary Faces, Places (Visages, Villages) – which premiered in Cannes last year – collaborates with Belgian-born veteran director Agnes Varda, who will fill 90 on 30. May this year, with JR The latter is a Parisian street artist – a kind of France's answer to Banksy – and the collaboration is about exploring their common sense of people, places and faces.

In a lyrical romp in the French countryside, Varda and JR travel around the JR brand: an "image van" – a photo studio on wheels that produces giant posters of his motifs, ready to be pasted on walls.

Giving women the opportunity to end the silent conspiracy with their abusers is at the very heart of Faces of Harassment.

JR – a slender and resilient man in his mid-30 years who is never seen without dark glasses and a pork-pie hat – had long admired the woman who is known as both a chronicler and participant in the new wave (let nouvelle vague) that characterized French film in the postwar period. Both are obsessed with the human face, and both love the rebellious democracy that public images make possible.

JR began his artistic career as a graffiti artist in his teens, until he found a camera on the subway in Paris and took photos, then made photocopies of the pictures to paste them onto walls and windows. He has become famous for his fiercely sized murals, and is more of a public figure than British Banksy (who strives to the extreme to avoid being visible). Thus, he becomes a kind of counterpart to Varda's friendly humor and her acceptance of the physical limitations of aging.

Varda – zealous and youthful despite her age – represents a form of artistic and socialist continuity as she takes up themes from films and projects that are half a century old, to put them into the present context.

The faces of harassment. Most films in Filmmor's selection are closer to the core of today's feminist politics than Varda's documentary – which becomes comfortable and dreamlike compared to Brazilian director Paula Sacchetta's Faces of Harassment.

Here, a large van with a built-in photo studio is not used to depict faces of public art, but to enable women to tell in their own words their experiences of sexual harassment.

The project is inspired by hashtag campaigns in social media: MyFirstHarassment and MySecretFriend. During the women's week (marked in Brazil between 7 and 14. March), the van visited several locations in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, where 140 women between 15 and 84 entered the car to tell their stories of assault, rape and humiliation. directly to the camera.

Testimony of abuse. Faces of Harassment presents an entire evening's edited selection of testimonies (all twelve hours of recording are available on the project's website: faceofharassment.com).

The women who flock to Istiklal Caddesi carry posters that include a drawing of an erect penis along with a statement in English: "Does this give you greater rights?"

Apart from the clear editing, the movie is quite simple. The testimonies are balanced – with the stories of teenagers and women of the 30 and 40 years – and the 80 year-old, who tells of a rape with a gun to the head committed by an 18-year-old boy who went to the same school as her daughter when she herself was in the 40 years.

The cinematic idea of ​​a woman alone in a dark room looking directly into a dark screen while we, the spectators in the cinema, sitting alone in a dark room watching, is powerful. The women tell their stories with moderation and strength, each shocking and heartbreaking in their own way.

Requires life back. Two stories stuck in me long after I saw Faces of Harassment. A young woman who told of her three-year relationship with a man – a relationship that culminated in him hitting her so violently that she ended up with a broken nose, broken bones and three broken ribs, while telling her where she lay the ground in a dirty alley that it was just her place: beneath him.

And the teary, masked girl who, with trembling voice, told how she had lost her "innocence and purity" as an 15 year-old when she was raped at a party by a boy who refused to accept that she had a relationship with another girl. At the end of her testimony, she sobs, repeating that she doesn't even have the courage to tell her therapist about it, for fear of being judged. Rape is the root cause of her chronic despair – and she knows she won't be able to get rid of the depression and feeling worthless unless she reveals it.

Giving women the opportunity to end the silent conspiracy with their abusers – to speak out and demand their lives back – is at the heart of Faces of Harassment. As the global gender balance is corrected, we can expect more documentaries of this type.