“Yes, it’s as chaotic as it sounds...” 

Blending film excerpts, visual materials, and scenographic interventions, this evening explores the evolution of Turkish horror cinema, particularly its portrayal of women as vessels for possession, curses, and supernatural power. Drawing on local folklore and Islamic references, films such as D@bbe and Musallat reveal deeper cultural anxieties around gender, tradition, modernity, and shifting power dynamics. 

For EMIRHAKIN and Özbay, “Turkish Horror” is not just a genre to be dissected academically. Instead, they invite audiences into Buro Stedelijk to experience these films as evolving cultural forms that continue to shape identity, collective fears, and ways of belonging. 

The conversation features excerpts from iconic Turkish horror films spanning from 1949 to the present, with a focus on the genre’s transformation over the past two decades — from imitating Hollywood tropes to embracing distinct Quranic symbolism. Through these films, the artists reflect on how horror shaped their understanding of identity from an early age. Growing up simultaneously inside and outside Turkey, they encountered the same cinematic references without knowing one another: one through everyday life in Turkey, the other through the mediated space of diaspora. Come join them in revisiting these films together, tracing how horror continues to shape ideas of memory, identity, fear, and belonging across different but strangely parallel lives. 

HORROR: Made in Turkey is selected through the Open Call for Unexpected Combinations as part of the month-long program Buro Relays in 2026. More info on the Open Call can be found here: https://burostedelijk.nl/events/open-call-events