Zenne Dancer

Plot Summary

Internationally acclaimed Turkish indy movie Zenne Dancer is inspired by the true characters and stories of Zenne Can and Ahmet Yildiz, who was murdered by his father in July 2008 in Istanbul. Zenne Dancer received 15 international awards and it has been described as the international LGBT movie of the year 2012. Zenne Dancer is the contemporary story of three unlikely friends: AHMET, a hyper-masculine gay (bear); CAN, a male belly dancer (Zenne); and DANIEL, a German photo-journalist, who are confronted by a systemic, institutionalized and culturally embedded homophobia that leads to the tragic death of Ahmet at the hands of his own father. Through this dynamic friendship and the events that unfold around them, the film explores layers of intolerance along masculine & feminine, east & west, traditional & modern lines in Istanbul, a city that is itself geographically, culturally and historically at the very crossroads of those divides.