Organisers of an Istanbul film festival announced its cancellation on Thursday to protest against a local authority ban on the screening of Queer, a drama starring Daniel Craig.
The arthouse film streaming platform Mubi said it was cancelling the entire four-day festival just hours before it was set to open in Kadikoy, on the Asian side of Istanbul.
“Hours before the start … we were told by the Kadikoy district authorities that the screening of Queer, the opening film, was banned … on grounds it contained provocative content that would disturb the peace,” it said.
The authorities said the ban would be “enforced for security reasons”, according to Mubi.
In the film, which was directed by Luca Guadagnino and premiered at the Venice film festival last month, Craig plays a lonely drug-addicted gay man. A love story between two men based on a short novel by William S Burroughs, it includes graphic sex scenes as it traces their emotional highs and lows.
Mubi denounced the ban as “restricting art and freedom of expression”.
“Festivals are breathing spaces that celebrate art and cultural diversity and bring people together. This ban affects not only a film but the meaning and purpose of the entire festival,” it said.
Although homosexuality was decriminalised in Turkey in 1858, it is frowned upon by large swaths of society, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regularly referring to LGBTQ+ people as “perverts” and accusing them of posing a threat to traditional families.
In 2020, the streaming giant Netflix cancelled production of a series in Turkey featuring a gay character after failing to obtain government permission for filming.
Istanbul’s annual Pride march has been banned every year since 2015 on security grounds and LGBTQ+ individuals say they face regular harassment and abuse.
London-based Mubi, a global arthouse movie streamer, producer and distributor, was set up in 2007 by the Turkish entrepreneur Efe Cakarel. It offers streaming services in more than 195 countries.
