Doc Fortnight ’25: Seen Unseen

Admittedly, Vance is a blowhard, but he is entirely justified when criticizing our Western European allies’ increasing hostility towards freedom of speech. However, those same countries still maintain some semblance of freedom of expression compared to Turkey, our NATO ally. Under the Erdogan regime, filmmaker Cigdem Mater is currently serving a long prison sentence for a documentary that she never actually made. This is Turkey’s nightmarish present, but could it also be Europe’s future? The “Seen Unseen Collective” contemplates government censorship and the resulting self-censorship in its anthology documentary Seen Unseen: An Anthology of [Auto]Censorship, which screens today as part of the 2025 Documentary Fortnight atMoMA.

Mater intended to produce a documentary on the protests in Gezi Square, which the police crushed, with almost Tiananmen-like severity. Firat Yucel directly addresses Gezi in the opening Doubt, in which a group of filmmakers connected online review footage for a prospective Gezi documentary of their own. However, at each step they worry about the potential repercussions, both for themselves and for the identifiable demonstrators in their footage. Ominously, but rather logically, Doubt eventually takes on the tone and tension of a “Screenlife” thriller.

The Walls interludes, in which security cameras capture prisoners writing resistance graffiti on the walls of the tiny interior prison courtyard exercise room (literally the Turkish word for “resistance”) do not have the same urgency and tension, but the related segment, in which the prisoners’ attorney recreates his courtroom demonstration which showed the materials available to them could not have produced the alleged lasting damage is quite an effective (and absurdist) indictment of the Turkish criminal justice system. (Not very shocking spoiler: they were convicted anyway.)

Missing Documentaries is a not very nostalgic throwback to Covid Zoom documentaries, but the subject is important. Culled from dozens of interviews, Sibil Cekmen presents the thoughts of filmmakers who still have unfinished documentaries languishing in limbo, mostly due to various forms of government interference.

Serra Akcan’s Dear F might be the most personal and subjective contribution, but it might also be the one the Erdogan regime would most likely censor. It considers the Armenian genocide through the lens of her family history. Chillingly, she recalls how one of her (presumably regime-friendly) cousins demanded an apology and retraction when she pointed out their family’s Armenian heritage.

Nadir Sonmez’s Cruising is the most niche, when it offers a cultural defense of an endangered public park, based on its history as an after-hours spot for casual gay hook-ups. However, it is quite strikingly assembled. In contrast, Sevil goes back to the Zoom format, interviewing artist Sevil Tunaboylu regarding her complicated emotional reaction when one of her large installations was vandalized.

Even at a mere 66-minutes, Seen Unseen is rather inconsistent, but it is quite alarming when taken as a whole. Frankly, Gen-Z’ers need to see films like Doubt, Dear F, and Missing Documentaries to understand how precious our 1^st Amendment truly is. Prosecuting speech on the basis of “hurt feelings” is a truly terrifying precedent to set, because nobody has more delicate feelings than high-ranking government officials. Turkey is indeed a case in point. Highly recommended for its considerable high points, Seen Unseen screens today (3/2) and Wednesday (3/5) as part of Doc Fortnight at MoMA.