Mediterranean Cinema Comes to Hackney: CineMediterra Returns to London for Its Second Edition

A boutique film festival celebrating the warmth, drama and storytelling of the Mediterranean basin returns to Hackney Picturehouse on 18 and 19 April 2026 — with Turkish cinema at its heart.

There is a particular quality to Mediterranean storytelling that no other cinema quite replicates. It is the weight of family loyalty and the lightness of summer heat existing in the same frame. It is the way a coastal neighbourhood can contain an entire universe of human feeling. It is the knowledge, embedded in every shot, that life is both fragile and abundant, and that the two conditions are not contradictory.

CineMediterra was founded to bring precisely this quality to London — and on 18 and 19 April 2026, it returns to Hackney Picturehouse for its second edition, with a programme that spans Italy, Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Cyprus and the United Kingdom, and that places Turkish cinema in a position of considerable prominence.

TBMag is proud to be among the festival’s supporters.

What CineMediterra Is

CineMediterra describes itself as a boutique, weekend-long festival, and the description is accurate in the best possible sense. Boutique here does not mean modest in ambition; it means carefully considered in execution. Each edition presents a curated selection of feature films and short films from Mediterranean countries, accompanied by direct conversations with the filmmakers, live music from regional artists, and food and wine that extend the Mediterranean experience beyond the screen.

The festival is hosted at Hackney Picturehouse, one of London’s most characterful independent cinema venues, in a corner of east London that has itself become a gathering point for creative communities from across Europe and beyond. The fit is deliberate.

This year’s edition will reach an expected attendance of 1,800 people, with a total audience reach across its platforms and partners of 350,000. For a festival in only its second year, those are significant numbers — and they reflect both the hunger for this kind of programming in London and the quality of the curation that CineMediterra has established in a short time.

The festival’s visual identity was recently refreshed by Monroe Creative Studio, winning four awards at the GMK Turkey 44th Graphic Design Exhibition, including Best Corporate Identity Design and Best in Motion Graphics. The creative direction was led by Onur Gökalp, with art direction by Berkin Ay. It is, in its own way, a story about Turkish creative talent operating at an international level — which is very much the kind of story TBMag exists to tell.

Saturday, 18 April: Two Features and a Live Set

The Saturday programme opens at 16:00 with Taxi Monamour, the 2024 Italian feature directed by Ciro de Caro. Two young women, Anna and Nadiya, find themselves at the same crossroads from very different directions. Anna is at odds with herself and her family. Nadiya, displaced by war, is attempting to flee Ukraine. Their encounter becomes something neither expected: an intense, unpredictable plunge into freedom. The film runs 110 minutes and has been praised across the European festival circuit for the precision of its emotional observation.

At 18:00, between the two features, the evening opens into something less structured. Hot Swing Boheme take the stage at Hackney Picturehouse for a free live set, bringing their swing and jazz influences to an audience that will, by that point in the evening, be in exactly the right mood for it. Entry is free; tickets are available via Eventbrite.

The Saturday programme closes at 19:30 with one of the most significant titles in this edition’s selection: Korkuyorum Anne — released internationally as What’s a Human Anyway — directed by Reha Erdem and shot in Istanbul in 2004. The film follows Ali, a young man who loses his memory after an accident and must reassemble his identity from scratch, discovering the world as if newborn. Set within a nostalgic Istanbul neighbourhood, the film weaves together a tight network of families and friends whose lives Ali’s presence quietly reshapes. At 128 minutes, it is a film that demands patience and rewards it generously. Reha Erdem is one of Turkish cinema’s most distinctive voices, and this is a rare opportunity to see the film on a proper screen in London.

Sunday, 19 April: Short Films from Across the Mediterranean

The Sunday programme is devoted to short films, and the selection is exceptional.

The session runs at 15:00 and brings together recent short films from emerging filmmakers across Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Cyprus and the United Kingdom, several of which have been recognised at Sundance, Venice, Clermont-Ferrand and the London Short Film Festival. A Q&A with directors follows the screening.

Five of the shorts have a direct Turkish connection, and collectively they demonstrate the range and confidence of contemporary Turkish short filmmaking.

Almost Certainly False (Neredeyse Kesinlikle Yanlış), directed by Cansu Baydar, follows Hanna, a young Syrian woman who has fled the war and settled in a run-down Istanbul neighbourhood. She spends her days learning nail design to earn a living, dreaming of reaching Europe. A chance encounter with a Turkish man on a night out forces her to navigate the competing claims of identity, desire and responsibility to her younger brother. The film is 20 minutes long and achieves a density of feeling that many feature films do not manage.

Dreams, Hopes and Rotating Dolphins, directed by Adil Burak Aydin, takes a markedly different approach. In a near-future where technology allows people to discover who they were in a past life, Erdi confronts an existential crisis while searching for his former self. The film is 11 minutes, wry, and available on MUBI.

Don’t Say It (Sakın Söyleme), directed by Ezgi Temel, follows Yaren and Arif, two friends on a late-night food run. While Arif collects the order, Yaren resolves to confess her feelings. Each time she speaks the words, time fractures and resets. To escape the loop, she tries something different each time. The film is 12 minutes and operates in the precise space where romantic comedy and existential dread overlap.

The Yarn, directed by Gokce Pehlivanoglu, one of CineMediterra’s co-founders, follows a Greek-Turkish couple and their young daughter as they travel by caravan along the Turkish Aegean coast — a journey that becomes a meditation on a story the parents have always told their daughter.

From Greece, Heat Me, directed by Kelly Sarri, sets three generations of women in a heatwave-struck apartment without air conditioning, against the backdrop of a hygiene workers’ strike. It is 15 minutes of precise domestic comedy and something more.

From Lebanon, Wissam Charaf’s And If the Sun Drowned Into an Ocean of Clouds follows a security guard on a Beirut waterfront construction site who finds himself making increasingly strange encounters as the horizon is swallowed by scaffolding. And from Cyprus and Greece, Michael Demetriou’s Glass Spider — five minutes, a mild night in, and a nomination at the London Short Film Festival — rounds out the selection with deliberate restraint.

Why This Festival Matters

London has no shortage of film festivals. What it has lacked, until recently, is a festival with the specific ambition of CineMediterra: to present Mediterranean cinema not as a category or a geography, but as a sensibility — a shared quality of light and weight and feeling that crosses the borders between Italian, Turkish, Greek, Lebanese and Cypriot storytelling.

For the Turkish-British community, the significance is particular. Turkish cinema has a long and distinguished tradition that remains significantly underrepresented in British cultural programming. Korkuyorum Anne is one of the finest Turkish films of the early 2000s, and it has rarely been shown in London. The short film selection includes five Turkish titles of genuine quality from emerging voices. The festival’s own visual identity was created by a Turkish creative studio and recognised by Turkey’s most prestigious graphic design body.

CineMediterra is not a Turkish festival. But Turkish cinema, Turkish creativity and the Turkish-British community are woven through it in ways that matter.

TBMag will be following the April edition closely.

Practical Information

CineMediterra Film Festival — April 2026 Edition Hackney Picturehouse, London Saturday 18 April and Sunday 19 April 2026

Saturday 18 April: Taxi Monamour at 16:00 · Hot Swing Boheme (free) at 18:00 · What’s a Human Anyway at 19:30 Sunday 19 April: Short Film Selection and Q&A at 15:00

Tickets and full programme: cinemediterra.co.uk

Filmmakers from Mediterranean countries may submit short and feature films via FilmFreeway. Details on the festival website.