Organisers of an Istanbul film festival announced its cancellation on Thursday to protest against a local authority ban on the screening of Queer, a drama starring Daniel Craig. The arthouse film streaming platform Mubi said it was cancelling the entire four-day festival just hours before it was set to open in Kadikoy on the Asian side of Istanbul. In the film, which was directed by Luca Guadagnino and premiered at the Venice film festival last month, Craig plays a lonely drug-addicted gay man. This ban affects not only a film but the meaning and purpose of the entire festival,” it said. London-based Mubi, a global arthouse movie streamer, producer and distributor, was set up in 2007 by the Turkish entrepreneur Efe Cakarel.
