32 Meters Review (IDFA 2025)
We are somewhere in southern Turkey, in Central Anatolia, in a traditional village. Residents gather and talk along the streets, sharing piles of sunflower seeds and exchanging teasing jokes. The village appears almost excessively traditional, as if technology missed its coordinates, yet its people hold nothing back. Whether on the mountains or in their homes, they speak openly with one another, take part in community discussions, and generally move through life with ease, always over a cup of tea. The place seems untouched by crime or mean intentions, to the point that I had to double-check whether this is truly a documentary.
Yet 32 Meters is no fiction. Despite the absence of crime, nearly every villager is somehow connected to local arms production. This connection has enabled a unique tradition in the region: a shooting competition. It is unsurprising that women have long been excluded from this event. But Halime, a local woman mentally still in her prime, knows how to shoot and begins introducing the pastime to her friends. When the group collectively requests to participate in the established competition, the event is promptly cancelled. Soon enough, they decide to organise their own competition, one exclusively for women.
From the outset, humour is evidently the glue and the key. The film follows the delightfully amusing process of bringing the event to life, and in doing so, these women defy with remarkable ease the patriarchal attitudes that dominate the hearts of authorities and husbands, including a few collateral female figures. You need not know the outcome of their efforts (although I need to mention the remarkably edited final scene that softly but deliberately cultivated tensions.) Because 32 Meters already grants access to a seemingly conservative environment while opening up to robust argumentations for equality, well-articulated and voiced by women who (I believe) received no formal (Western) education.
It is genuinely empowering, not only for the humour that grounds it, but for the effortless infiltration this group of women achieves into local structures long maintained exclusively by men.
32 Meters is, without reservation, a refreshing example of peace triumphing. As a bright, stimulating, and also warm watch, it kept me (and my peers) firmly in our seats, asking for more until the final note of the ending titles. Permit me a brief smile here, for the sheer uniqueness of what this picture offers. I am not only thinking of the establishment of gender equality in places where religion and tradition impose obsolete norms and shrink possibilities to this day, but also of the glimpse of peace it suggests, particularly in a region built on histories of bigotry and war.ย
In that sense, it is energising to witness the tools of conflict transformed into hobbies, even among those usually left on the margins. It is equally heartwarming to spend time with these women, covered in their headscarves and patterned clothes, not wiping away tears of sorrow with the tip of their covers but laughing their hearts out.
32 Meters had its world premiere at the 2025 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, in the Luminous section. In addition to being nominated for Best First Feature, the film has also been nominated for the FIPRESCI Award.
32 Meters (32 Metre), 84โ / Director: Morteza Atabaki / Cinematography: Morteza Atabaki, Zeynep Seรงil / Editing: Morteza Atabaki / Production: Morteza Atabaki for Road Pictures, Murat Ones / Co-production: Al Jazeera Documentary / Screening copy: Road Pictures / Turkey, Iran
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