The international premiere of Hold Still, the long-feature documentary produced by Hafıza Merkezi, will take place in Prizren, Kosovo as part of the DokuFest International Documentary and Short Film Festival. Hold Still will be screened as part of DokuFest’s Truth Dox competition and compete for an award in this category alongside seven other films. This year’s Truth Dox jury features Bojana Marić, Dafina Halili, and Rohan Berry Crickmar. Hold Still’s two DokuFest screenings are scheduled for Tuesday, August 6, 2024 and Friday, August 9, 2024.

The 23rd edition of the prestigious festival will be held between August 2-10, 2024. DokuFest features a diverse selection of documentaries on human rights, the Balkans, and ecology, and is considered one of the leading cultural events in Southeast Europe. Click here to see the complete festival schedule.

Directed by Berke Baş and produced by Enis Köstepen, Hold Still was shot between 2018 and 2022. In 1995, seven people were forcibly disappeared in Mardin’s Dargeçit district. The documentary follows the court process of the Dargeçit JİTEM Trial, opened after years of struggle by their relatives, their lawyer Erdal Kuzu, and the Human Rights Association. It focuses on the last five years of the trial, which began in 2015. At a time when we face the risk of the dismissal of cases regarding the gross human rights violations committed in the 1990s due to the 30-year statute of limitations, we aim to raise the voice of the struggle against impunity through Hold Still’s distribution.

Hafıza Merkezi has been monitoring the Dargeçit trial as part of FailiBelli.org since 2015. The course of the trial, including the political atmosphere that made it possible for these indictments to be drafted and how the trajectory changed over time, opens the door to multi-layered debates on impunity, confronting the past, conflict resolution, justice, and the search for truth in Turkey. We hope that Hold Still will contribute to the expansion of these debates and become a part of the memory of the human rights movement as a documentary that honors the resilience of the struggle for this cause.

We invite individuals, initiatives, and institutions who want to screen Hold Still in collaboration with Hafıza Merkezi in the coming months to contact us at info@hafiza-merkezi.org.