Through cinema and literature, Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay and Aslı Erdoğan explore how language can create a sense of belonging, but also what happens when it becomes a place of exclusion and resistance. Their work confronts the pressures placed on those who speak from between languages, challenge established narratives, or refuse the vocabulary imposed on them.  

In The Stone Building and Other Places (2018) Erdoğan draws on political violence, exile, and repression, using interwoven voices and the recurring image of prison to express trauma that resists straightforward narrations. Büyükatalay’s films examine how faith and identity shape how we see and represent one another. Deniz Utlu, whose own work as an author often returns to migration, memory, and the struggle to find words for both, will guide the conversation. Together, their work shows how language can be reclaimed and unsettled to carry experiences excluded from official accounts.