Kardeş Türküler: Songs of Fraternity is a feature-length project that tells the musical and political journey of the Kardeş Türküler Project, which started within the Boğaziçi University Folklore Club in 1993… in a way a chronicle of ‘togetherness’, children, women, trees, rivers, a fraternity of cultures and languages that cannot be divided by borders. Not only languages, but history, culture, poetry, writers and artists meet on the stage: Hrant Dink, Neşet Ertaş, Reem Kelani, Sezen Aksu, Arto Tunçboyacıyan, Sayat Nova choir, the list goes on… So this movie brings forward for the first time the 30-year old story of Kardeş Türküler as they navigate and reflect with their music the political and social realities of the recent history of Turkey.

Çayan Demirel & Ayşe Çetinbaş
Çayan Demirel was born in Istanbul in 1977. After graduating from the Faculty of Economics, he started working on documentaries with oral history projects. He completed his first documentary, ’38’, in 2006. In 2009, he founded Surela Film Production, and his film ‘Prison Number 5: 1980-84’ won Best Documentary Award at various festivals that same year. After that, he directed the documentary Dr. Şivan in 2013 and Bakur in 2015. Ayşe Çetinbaş was born in 1979 in Germany. She received a BA in Economics from Istanbul University and an MA in European Public Policy from Greenwich University. After graduation, she worked as a production assistant on various national and international documentary film projects. Together with Çayan Demirel, Çetinbaş founded Surela Film Production. Between 2008-2014, she was an executive board member of the BSB’s International 1001 Documentary Film Festival.