Sunday, April 4, 2010    3:30 p.m.
Remis Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts
465 Huntington Avenue, Boston

SYNOPSIS

Can a boy of nine be a big brother, a father, a mother and a luminary all at once? For young Ayşe, the answer is yes. In fact, as far as she is concerned, her big brother Ahmet is afraid of nothing at all. But the truth is, Ahmet is a child too: he too has his fears and it iss impossible for him to know everything.

Their father Kazim has gone off to marry another woman and abandoned the two children to their fate with Hasan, their crippled elderly grandfather. But in spite of everything, brother and sister never seem to lose hope.

This simple, poignant tale of a village, and the relationship between a brother and sister in that village, portrays one of the grittier realities of Anatolia.

SELECTED FESTIVALS AND AWARDS

• Berlin Film Festival, Germany (2009): K-Plus Competition
• Nurnberg Turkey-Germany Film Festival, Germany (2009): Best Film, Best Film Audience Awards
• Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, Turkey (2009): Best Film Audience Award
• Hamedan International Children and Adolescent Film Festival, Iran (2009): Best Director Award
• Nueva Mirada International Film Festival, Argentina (2009): Special Mention
• Yerevan International Children's Films Festival, Armenia (2009): Best Film, UNICEF-Best Children's Rights Film Awards
• Dadas Film Festival, Erzurum, Turkey (2009): Best Film Award
• Bursa Silk Road Film Festival, Turkey (2009): Golden Karagoz Best Director, Special Jury Prize (Elif Bulbul)
• Olympia Children and Youth Film Festival, Greece (2009): Best Young Actress Award (Elif Bulbul), UNICEF Special Prize
• Du Grain Film Festival, France (2009): Best Film, Young Film Audience Best Film Awards
• First Directors Film Festival, Turkey (2009): Yucel Cakmakli Honor Award
• Mumbai Children's Film Festival, India (2009)
• Istanbul International Film Festival, Turkey (2009): competition
• Crossing Europa Film Festival, Linz, Austria (2009)
• Zlin Film Festival, Czech Republic (2009)
• Shangai International Film Festival, China (2009)
• Seoul International Film Festival, South Korea (2009)
• Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia (2009)
• Sarajevo International Film Festival, Bosnia Herzegovina (2009)
• Rio Film Festival, Brazil (2009)
• Copenhagen International Children's Film Festival, Denmark (2009)
• Ghent International Film Festival, Belgium (2009)
• Stuttgart Children's Film festival, Germany (2009)

Director ATALAY TASDIKEN

Born in 1964 in Beyşehir, Konya, Atalay Taşdiken graduated from Konya's Selçuk University with a Teacher Training degree in Physics. In 1991 he began working in advertising, learning a broad range of skills as a dark room technician, a media representative, a copywriter, and a creative director. Over the next ten years, he went on to direct over 300 commercials and served as creative director on some 30 product campaigns. Atalay Taşdiken was awarded Meritorious Service Award of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) in 2009.

In between times, he wrote and directed Beş Numaralı Kamp (Camp Number Five), a fiction film for television that was set up as a Turkish-Russian-Uzbek co-production. In 1996  he made the documentary Güneş Bile Zor Ayrılır Bu Şehirden (Even the Sun Is Loath To Leave), a short piece about his hometown Beyşehir, a place of legendary sunsets. Atalay Taşdiken is a member of "Academy of Asia Pasific Screen Awards".

Mommo (The Bogeyman) is his first full-length feature film. Mommo had its world premiere in the Generation section of Berlinale 2009.