Films produced by Cemaat Media in 2026 were featured at numerous festivals and screenings, although this year marked the first time we did not produce a single new documentary: all our efforts were focused on a new project that we will be presenting soon. At the same time, the amount of content we managed to produce during 2021 and then in the first three years of the full-scale war will allow us to continue introducing viewers to life in Crimea for a long time to come, as the world has increasingly less information about it.

In September, Istanbul hosted the first festival dedicated to the centennial of Crimean Tatar cinema. Of the eight films in competition, two were produced by us. First and foremost, it is worth highlighting Ernes Sarykhalil’s film "And the Wind Returns", which has previously participated in several competitions but this year received a special prize at the Gordion Festival in Ankara, and in November it will also be screened at the UKRAINA! Festiwal Filmowy (UFF) in Warsaw.

Only documentary films were included in the competition program of the Crimean Tatar Film Festival in Istanbul, but feature films were also screened out of competition: both films were produced with our funding. It’s worth mentioning director Sarykhalil again, with whom we have experience producing feature films. His feature film “Soñ Arif” was screened in Istanbul.

CEMAAT Media is neither the first nor the largest Crimean Tatar film production company. But the numbers speak for themselves: in four years, we’ve produced over 20 documentaries, one medium-length feature film, and three miniseries. A third of our films were released in the Crimean Tatar language. We outsourced the production of most of our films to external producers, in an effort to build something resembling an industry. A few films were produced in Crimea, but for security reasons, we do not publicize them. For the same reasons, the CEMAAT brand is not included in their copyright notices. Most of our work is available on the CEMAAT Media YouTube channel in the “Documentaries” section.

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However, there is one area where we are not major players — self-promotion and self-advertising. We’ve left festival participation entirely up to the directors, and our team never takes part in panel discussions or roundtables, which are favored by organizers of human rights events. That is why we are especially grateful to Elvis Çolpuh, the founder of the Crimean Cultural Center “Kermen” in Germany. Thanks to his initiative, the documentary “Avdet” (“Return”) by director Refat Malikov was screened at a Berlin movie theater, and two other films — “Isolation-1” and “Isolation-2” by director Fatima Osmanova — were screened at the seventh Ukrainian Film Festival in Germany.

This festival deserves a more detailed description. It is one of the largest Ukrainian cultural events in Europe and — unlike other similar events — always draws full houses. It was at this festival that the Crimean Tatar theme was first featured.

At the moment, we cannot predict whether we will be able to resume documentary film production in the near future. However, at the end of the year, something unexpected — and certainly very pleasant — awaits our viewers.