Doha to host Turkish film festival
Move reflects growing popularity of Turkish dramas in the Arab world
Manama: A Turkish film festival will be held next week in Qatar in a new indication of the growing interest of the Arab world in drama from its non-Arabic speaking Muslim neighbour.
The films to be screened at the First Doha Turkish Film Festival on June 6-9 will feature actors and actresses popular in the Arab world, organisers said.
Film directors, programmers and producers will also attend the festival and the public will have the opportunity to meet them.
The festival, held with the support of the Turkish government, includes 15 films that include My Father and My Son, The White Angel, Waiting for Heaven, Three Monkeys and Vision Tele.
Panel discussions by experts and commentators will be held on the sideline, Qatari daily Gulf Times reported on Monday.
Turkish drama has since 2008 become popular in the Arab world, due mainly to the use of colloquial Arabic instead of the classical Arabic voice-overs used for Spanish-language soap operas. The names of all the characters were also changed into Arabic.
According to Turkish tourism authorities, the number of Arabs visiting Turkey to see the places shown in the dramas had increased.
However, the extraordinary popularity of the dramas has prompted several religious figures, mainly in Saudi Arabia, to ask for a ban on the soap operas, claiming that they were "replete with wickedness, evil, moral collapse and war on virtues."
