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ISTANBUL

Jihad

CNN And Hello

Singing In The Rain

Relaxation

Ignorance

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ISTANBUL

Arriving late at night, we hurtle into the city in a scarily fast taxi-ride from the airport on a road next to glittering water, huge ships and tankers looming out of the darkness. At the modern hotel I change rooms (as usual) for one that has a fractionally better view. In the middle of the night I get up to stare out of the window at the gold minarets illuminated on the other side of the water. And again at 5am , woken by the multiple calls of the muezzin - a sort of city-wide sound collage - I stand and stare, wrapping myself in the curtains. And then again, at 6am I am lured to the window as I see that dawn is breaking. The sky is turning a deep blue, the water is blue, the buildings look blue and set against this monochrome world the mosques look even brighter now, with their glowing gold domes and minarets. My body-clock is confused from the time-zones in the USA so I wake groaning a couple of hours later when the hotel operator calls.

Lunch with the Turkish distributors of the film turns out to be in the presence of a team from Turkish CNN and many journalists. Unfortunately none of them have yet seen the film, so the interviews are somewhat limited, but I do my best and so do they. And the food is delicious. Simon (Abkarian) calls in on my cell-phone during the lunch. He wants to know how it is going. As an Armenian he is curious about the Turkish reaction (given the history of the two nations), and as an actor he is curious how the first Muslim country to buy the film is reacting to its Middle-eastern content and to the character he plays.

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Simon Abkarian



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Can Anamur of ANS International, our Turkish distributors



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At the lunch



Text © Sally Potter. All pictures © Adventure Pictures unless otherwise indicated