How can one tackle the effects of colonialism on indigenous African people more than half a century after most nations on the continent got their independence? In How to Build a Library, directors Maia Lekow and Christopher King choose a straightforward, methodical route. Their doc follows two Kenyan women as they try to transform a colonial era derelict library in downtown Nairobi. This humongous task demands patience, tenacity and a willingness to confront the past. Lekow and King bring the same skills to their film, but their task remains too vast and complicated for easy answers. 

In cooperation with Verband Filmregie Österreich and International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risks (ICFR). With support of FFW, VdFS und ÖFI.

The screening will be bookended by an introductory keynote presentation by Jordi Wijnalda, Brussels-based filmmaker and coordinator of the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk. After the film, there will be a deep-diving conversation with two of the filmmakers from the film’s collective, Sibil Çekmen and Nadir Sönmez.

Filmmaking is light, literally and figuratively; whatever filmmakers choose to portray in their films has a chance to step out of the shadow and not wither in the dark. With the rise of authoritarianism across the world, the role of filmmakers and other artists and cultural workers has only become more crucial in the fight against human rights violations and oppression of personal freedom. Increasingly, however, this comes at a great price for the filmmakers themselves, too — being persecuted, brought before court and imprisoned in countries like Iran, Myanmar, Belarus, South-Korea, Georgia and Turkey.

Across six different short films by eight filmmakers, this eclectic and courageous film takes its viewers on a journey past the pressing matters of Turkey in this day and age: the 2013 Gezi Park peaceful protests which have resulted in much government crackdown and show trials, the deliberately underlit gay cruising spots in Istanbul, the lasting scars and remnants of the Armenian genocide.

How can you be silent in the face of all that? But also, how can you stop yourself from censoring your own voice and your own work, when constantly confronted with the threat of oppression? Within the film, there is also a particular role reserved for documentary producer Çiğdem Mater, whom the collective as well as the ICFR have been actively campaigning for since she was sentenced to a shocking eighteen years in prison back in 2022 — for an alleged “Gezi Park documentary” she never even made to begin with.