“THE TOWN THAT DROVE AWAY” WINS AWARD AT THE ROTTERDAM FESTIVAL
The multi-award-winning documentary “The Town that Drove Away”, directed by Natalia Pietsch and Grzegorz Piekarski, has received the King Kong Award at this year’s Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR) – the world’s largest film festival dedicated to cities and architecture. The award, presented for the first time in the festival’s history, will henceforth honor the most promising feature films showcased at the event.
This year’s edition of AFFR took place from 8 to 12 October 2025 in Rotterdam. For years, the festival has presented a wide-ranging film program that encourages reflection on the development of cities and urban spaces, portraying architecture not only as an art form but also as a force shaping the social and political realities of the modern world. The program includes a diverse selection of works – from documentaries on specific urban projects to biographies of architects, reports on failed planning processes, science-fiction films envisioning future cities, and animations depicting imagined spaces.
About the film
After ten thousand years of continuous settlement, the ancient city of Hasankeyf disappears beneath the water. Following a government order, more than twenty dams are to be built in the northern Kurdish region of Turkey, resulting in the displacement of over 350,000 Arabs and Kurds. Promises of modern life strip people of their identity and family homes, replacing them with concrete structures. Rengin, a Kurdish shepherdess, and Burak, a local barber, become entangled in a political game in which survival depends on submission to new, incomprehensible rules: single residents lose their right to new homes, and shepherds must give up their animals. Each new restriction reminds them that their lives have never truly belonged to them - they are merely pawns in a system that demands obedience and compliance.
More information about the festival and the films nominated for the award can be found here.