Country: Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, Romania
Year: 2025
Duration: 124'
After surviving the brutal massacre of her family in a Taliban raid on a rural Afghan village, Leyla is left with nothing but the desperate hope of finding her missing son, Omid. In a world where her existence as a woman is a danger in itself, she does the unthinkable. Disguising herself in her husband’s clothes, pressing his freshly cut beard to her own skin, Leyla becomes someone who allowed to move through a world that would otherwise consume her. Cloaked in borrowed masculinity, she sets out on a perilous journey across an unforgiving land, chasing faint hope.
Biography
film director
Gözde Kural
(Ankara, Turkey, 1987) is a director and screenwriter. She studied Advertising and Film-TV Production at Istanbul Bilgi University. After graduating, she worked as an assistant director on various productions and gradually moved into directing. Her debut feature film, Dust (2015), was shot in Afghanistan and premiered at major international film festivals including Montreal, Shanghai, and Mumbai, receiving several awards. In 2022, she directed Once Upon a Time, a docu-drama series tracing Anatolia’s layered cultural heritage through dramatized real stories. Cinema Jazireh is her second feature film.
FILMOGRAFIA
Ayik (Awake) (cm, 2009), Braid (cm, 2011), The Laceration (cm, 2011), Toz (Dust) (2015), Once Upon a Time (serie tv, 2022), Cinema Jazireh (2025).
Declaration
film director
“What first came to my mind was a striking contrast: a woman disguised as a man stumbles upon a man disguised as a woman. I kept wondering how could they have possibly gotten there? While traveling across Afghanistan, city by city, I heard countless stories. Some were told to me, others I witnessed, and a few I experienced myself. I began to filter them all through a personal lens, and from that emerged the story of Cinema Jazireh.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY: Gözde Kural. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Adib Sobhani. FILM EDITING: Gözde Kural, Bünyamin Bayansal. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Babak Tahmili. COSTUME DESIGN: Egzi Karayel. CAST: Fereshte Hosseini, Mazlum Sümer, Ali Karimi, Hamid Karimi, Meysam Damanzeh, Reza Akhlaghirad. PRODUCTION: Gözde Kural, Bulut Reyhanoğlu, Milad Khosravi per Toz Film Production, Koskos Film, Seven Springs Pictures, Front Film, Avva Mmix Studios, Soberworks, Orion, Mintyfare Productions.
CONTATTO: 7 Springs 7springs.submissions@gmail.com
