

Five directors, one devastating truth: borders bleed the same everywhere.
Coastliners puts the theme of “human rights” together with different stories, and consists of five short fiction films made by internationally acclaimed different directors. We accompany the personal effects of refugees washed ashore, the peculiar story of an assaulted young man, a mother and daughter who take refuge in a house when bombs sound on the Syrian border, a hero stuck in the hurly burly of Istanbul, trying to overcome obstacles; and the her spiritual journey of a pregnant woman trying to return to her village from where she was cast away.
Direction
Five wildly distinct voices, somehow one coherent wound.
Production
Intimate scale makes global crisis feel bedroom-close.
Director
Melisa Önel
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Coastliners emerged from a 2016 initiative pairing Turkish filmmakers with refugee crises across the Aegean, when EU-Turkey deals were literally drowning people.
Melisa Önel's segment was shot in a single house with actual Syrian refugees as background cast, blurring documentary and fiction deliberately.