Winners of ILO-sponsored short film competition announced

The results of the contest of short documentary films were announced at a ceremony held in Ankara on Thursday, 17 March 2016. The contest was organized under the project “More and Better Jobs for Women: Women’s Empowerment through Decent Work in Turkey” implemented jointly by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Turkish Employment Agency (İŞKUR) with funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).


The theme of the contest was “gender equality at the workplace, in family and everywhere, and success stories related to women’s employment” The winner of the first price was director Celal Köken with his film “Hanımeli” about the daily life of a 76 years old woman who has been running a tire workshop for 35 years. The second prize went to director Ezgi Var with ‘Aşk’la’ and the third to Ekin Çalışır with ‘Sarışın Taksi’.


Opening speeches at the ceremony were delivered by Numan Özcan, Director of the ILO Office for Turkey; Süleyman Soylu, Minister of Labour and Social Security (MoLSS); Tomas Bergenholtz, Undersecretary of Swedish Embassy in Turkey and İŞKUR Acting Director General Mehmet Ali Özkan. Short films of three awardees were also shown, followed by short interviews with the mains characters and women directors in three films, moderated by actress Meltem Cumbul.

In his speech, Süleyman Soylu, Minister of Labour and Social Security said, “Gaining domestic and international appreciation with its all-embracing policies in recent years, the İŞKUR is the innovation brand of the 21st century. The agency will continue to step up its activities and services with its vision. Obstacles to women’s employment will be removed with outcomes of policies geared to enhancing both economic welfare and social peace. Like in many other fields, our country is firmly marching to attain 2023 targets in women’s employment as well.”


Stressing that the contest was organized to eliminate biases against women’s labour, to enhance awareness in the importance of women’s paid and decent work and to make real stories of women visible, ILO Director Numan Özcan said, “All stories in fact demonstrate that there is no such distinction as ‘male job’ and ‘female job’ and what really matters is to build a working life that offers fair and equal opportunities.”

“The İŞKUR is a well-established and effective organization targeting job placements for about 1 million people, successfully implementing programmes with hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries, sharing its experience with other countries of the world by presiding over the World Association of Public Employment Services (WAPES) and seeking to attain its objectives through both national and international projects like the one bringing us together on this occasion of award ceremony”, said Mehmet Ali Özkan, Acting Director General of İŞKUR.

Tomas Bergenholtz, Undersecretary of Swedish Embassy in Turkey remarked, “As is the case with this project we intend to support Turkey in its EU accession process through innovative ways. In this context, the present project as well as the activities of İŞKUR, MoLSS and ILO are very important indeed.”


Three award winning films were determined by votes of the jury composed of representatives from ILO and İŞKUR and DİSK, TÜRK-İŞ, HAK-İŞ and TİSK confederations, as well as prominent figures from the community of arts and academia including Meltem Cumbul, Demet Akbağ, Mert Fırat, Hülya Koçyiğit and Haluk Gürgen.

As winners, Celal Köken, Ezgi Var and Ekin Çalışır received their awards, respectively, from Labour and Social Security Minister Süleyman Soylu, ILO Director Numan Özcan and Tomas Bergenholtz, undersecretary of Swedish Embassy.

Monetary awards were 7,500 TL for the first, 5,000 TL for the second and 2,500 TL for the third.