The first feature film of young director Gökalp Yamen, who graduated from Near East University Faculty of Communication, Department of Radio, Television and Cinema in 2016, was screened at the 11th Bodrum Turkish Films Week (11th BOTH) Festival. Yamen, in his first film, “Celal’s Train”, brings together with the audience the struggle of Celal, a young cinema lover, to shoot his first movie and his adventure of shooting a movie in Kars with a limited budget.

“Celal’s Train”, which was shown at the Bodrum Turkish Films Week, organized for the 11th time by the Bodrum Cinema and Culture Association and brought together many famous filmmakers, actors and directors, attracted great attention.

The adventure of making a first movie
Young Near Eastern director Gökalp Yamen wrote the script of the first feature film he directed together with Seyit Ali Çelik. The plot of “Celal’s Train” is as follows: The only dream of Celal, who wants to shoot his first movie but does not even have money to buy a camera, is to make a movie and make his voice heard from the village he lives in to the world. In the absence of knowledge and wealth, Celal, who finds the light of life in the cinema, will risk everything for his dreams. The aim of making his voice heard from Kars to the world forces him to create opportunities in all impossibilities.

The young director from the Near East won many awards during his student years!
Gökalp Yamen, who graduated from Near East University Faculty of Communication in 2016, was deemed worthy of many awards for the documentaries and short films he shot during his student years. Yamen’s documentary “Cilavuz Village Institutes” competed in the 3rd Turkish World Documentary Film Festival in 2018, and his fiction called “They Shot Me Outside Çanakkale” was deemed worthy of the 2016 Special Jury Prize at the “Golden Baklava Film Festival” held in Gaziantep. The young director’s short film “Postal 1974” also won him the first prize in the Best Director category at the Lions Short Film Contest.

Gökalp Yamen: “Cinema is my greatest passion. In my first feature film, I wanted to tell how this great passion draws people in.”
Young director Gökalp Yamen said that his love for cinema started during his high school years in Aydın and that this love brought him to the Department of Radio, Television and Cinema at the Near East University Faculty of Communication. Stating that the university years he spent at Near East University increased his passion for cinema and added a lot to him, Gökalp Yamen said, “I prepared myself for my biggest dream, which is to shoot a feature film, with the documentaries and short films I directed during my university years. I learned a lot from my teachers during this process.”

Saying that his first feature film, “Celal’s Train”, tells the story of Celal, who is struggling to shoot his first film like himself, Yamen said: “Cinema is my biggest passion. In my first feature film, I wanted to tell how this great passion draws people in.”