İzem Ayşegül Topal

Summary

The city changes, letters do not. This film, acting as a serenade to Chantal Akerman’s News from Home, proceeds in reverse this time: Istanbul instead of New York; emotional, fragile, and sincere texts written by children to their mothers instead of a mother’s letters. Read over moving, sometimes lonely but always vibrant images of Istanbul, these letters are not merely personal memories, but also a map of belonging, longing, and fragility for a generation. While establishing a language of love oscillating between distance and proximity, the film invites the viewer to both reflect on their relationship with their own mother and to re-read their bond with the city.

What do you hold back from your mother?

While wandering through the city she lives in, the artist (İzem A. TOPAL) realized just how distant she is from it. The city holds no trace of the artist herself. Feeling unaccepted by cinema, which enabled her to survive, she felt expelled from the city as well. Wherever she looked, she saw only advertisements and predetermined paths.

Over time, she felt the need to hear the things she could not say to her mother through the voices of others. She asked the women around her what they held back from their mothers and recorded their answers. During the same period, she captured images of the city in which she was lost, confining them within her camera. Bringing together these two elements bearing the sensation of non-existence, she presented them as a required assignment to a professor she held in high regard. Her professor noticed the inconsistency the artist displayed while running away from herself and indicated that the film must also include a voice recording of the artist herself. Thus began the process of reshooting the film. The friends with whom she had been lost formed the crew; together, they built a collective, creating a cinema of their own.

Purpose and Scope

This work bears the traces of a journey that begins with the artist’s sense of displacement in the city she inhabits and extends into the process of constructing her own cinema. It aims to make visible the endeavor of individuals pushed to the margins of cinema to create their own narratives. By addressing individual and collective states of being lost, the work interrogates the relationship established with the city and cinema.

Team

When the artist began reshooting the film, she encountered an art crew that was ‘lost’ in ways different from her own. Now, through this exhibition, together with her new companions, she aims to experience the state of being lost in diverse forms; to construct her own cinema instead of waiting to be accepted by it; and to transform the city into a space ‘claimed by getting lost together,’ beyond imposed boundaries.

İzem Ayşegül Topal
Director/Cinema

Born in Ankara in 1999. Graduated from the Department of Psychology at Okan University. Since 2020, has been working as an intern in a neuro-modulation project led by Dr. Maria Veldhuizen from Yale University School of Medicine and supported by TÜBİTAK.
Wrote and directed the debut short film, Modem, which was sold to BluTV in 2021. Studied cinema at Okan University between 2020 and 2022.
Began a second undergraduate degree in the Opera Department at Istanbul University State Conservatory in 2023.
She was accepted into the Cinema Master’s Program at Bilgi University in 2024. In the same year, participated in various symposiums as a speaker and shared research on short horror films. Currently continues to seek funding for research and film projects. Topal’s diverse background in psychology, music, filmmaking, and neuro-modulation demonstrates a multidisciplinary approach and a curiosity for exploring the human experience.