Announcement from Oyoun and Soura Film Festival

With this announcement we would like to express our views regarding the cancellation of the Q&A with Tugay Saraç in connection with the film “Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution, and Islam” on Friday, October 22.10.2021nd, XNUMX.

After the announcement of the Soura Film Festival's program, internal disagreements arose around the film in question and the associated round of talks and we regret that the film was ultimately shown.

On the day of the screening, the team of the Oyoun and the Soura Film Festival decided not to allow the discussion to take place after the film and to contextualize the screening itself based on a joint statement read out before the beginning, in which our distancing from Seyran Ateş became clear. On that day we realized that a critical and balanced examination of the film and its protagonist would not have been possible with the panel cast and we owe it to our audience to provide a space for critical voices with regard to the activities and views of the protagonist . Since we did not succeed in this in this year's conception, we did not want to give a one-sided presentation a mouthpiece.

The Oyoun is an anti-disciplinary epicenter for queer * feminist, decolonial and class-critical perspectives and cooperates with the Soura Film Festival, a project to promote and visibility queer films from the SWANA region.

Together we advocate an anti-racist, intersectional and inclusive society. We regret the mistakes we made here and will endeavor to avoid such mistakes in programming, coordination and communication in the future.

Additional note from Oyoun

Seyran Ateş accepted an invitation from the right-wing, anti-Muslim Austrian party FPÖ. In addition, in our opinion, she does not stand up for the rights of Muslim women by publicly and legally supporting the headscarf ban. These and other activities and collaborations by Seyran Ateş do not fit in with our worldview of openness, democracy, freedom of belief and equality, which is why we consider the program planning to be suboptimal and in parts regret it.

Related Links

Tag iron: Seyran Ates denies conflict of interest

TAZ: How not to speak with rights

FPÖ: Left stand upside down: Seyran Ates met HC Strache

Fact sheet: Seyran Ateş by the Bridge Initiative of Georgetown University about Islamophobia in the US and around the world