The Foça Film Platform was founded in 2022 by a group of local residents who volunteered their time and energy to ensure the sustainability of the Foça International Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Documentary Film Festival.

By coming together as the Foça Film Platform, our aim is to increase local residents’ access to creative activities; to promote Foça’s cultural heritage on international platforms, while bringing international culture to Foça through cinema; and to provide support for cultural tourism in order to bring long-term economic as well as social benefits to local residents.

Over the past few years, the Foça Film Platform has worked to broaden participation at Foça Film Days, reaching out to local high schools and universities in order to provide opportunities for students to meet filmmakers from throughout Turkey and abroad. Volunteer members of the Platform have also helped make it possible to include in the festival program a ‘Day of Workshops’ conducted by visiting filmmakers and volunteer artists working in different creative media.

Prompted by this expansion of activities, as well as a wish to provide a more solid institutional structure to the Festival, in 2025 members of the Foça Film Platform helped to found a new civil society organization: the Foça Agora Laboratory Culture, Art, Environment and Tourism Association. Foça Agora Lab aims to support innovative, inclusive practices that bring together people from diverse backgrounds, encouraging civic participation in activities that focus on interactions among culture, art, the environment and tourism.