Crime and Punishment Film Festival starts with focus on juvenile justice

The third International Crime and Punishment Film Festival will get under way on Friday in Istanbul, offering a week-long academic and film program that aims to investigate the causes of and remedies for juvenile delinquency. With "Juvenile Justice" as its main theme, the festival will try to get to the bottom of serious problems, including the high number of children who enter the criminal justice system as defendants, the possible solutions to reintegrate these children into society and the wrongs done to children by adults, from Sept. 13 to 19. In addition to feature and short film screenings, the festival will present seminars, panel discussions, exhibitions and a thematic contest revolving around the main theme. Academics, actors and representatives from nongovernmental organizations will take part in discussions on juvenile justice, according to a press release posted on the website of the festival by the organizers -- Istanbul University's faculty of law. The festival will open its academic program at the university's conference and culture center early on Friday with a panel discussion on the reasons for juvenile delinquency and justice. Two other panel discussions will also take place on the first day. In the meantime, the film program of the festival will start at the Beyoğlu movie theater with the screening of Seyfettin Tokmak's movie "Kirik Midyeler" (Broken Mussels), which follows the stories of two children from the southeastern Turkish province of Mardin who come to Istanbul and work in the city to go to Germany, where some of their relatives live. However, the official opening film of the festival is Spanish director Patricia Ferreira's "The Wild Ones." Ferreira's film, which tells about the difficulty of dealing with children during their transition from childhood to adulthood, will be screened at the Atlas movie theater in Beyoglu. The films on the bill will be screened under the sections "Juvenile Justice," "The Scale of Justice," "Crime Stories" and "Panorama" and include more than 60 movies from Turkey and abroad. A total of 10 movies from foreign countries will be vying for the festival's International Golden Scales Feature Film Competition. Among the contestants are Laura Mañá's "The Visitor of Prisons" from Spain and Ryszard Bugajski's "The Closed Circuit" and Archil Kavtaradze's "Disorder" from Georgia. The short film competition of the festival has been canceled due to an insufficient number of submissions that explore this year's theme. Tickets for the festival can be purchased at MyBilet.com. For further information and the complete program, go to www.icapff.com.