“Sound Dreams of Istanbul”
Musician and director Anıl Eraslan presents the documentary “Sound Dreams of Istanbul” (2025, 70’), dedicated to Istanbul’s experimental and improvisational music community.
This is followed by an improvised set by him on the cello and Merve Salgar on the tambur — two musicians who divide their time between Strasbourg, Berlin, and Istanbul.
◍ The event offers a unique immersion into the heart of Istanbul’s contemporary experimental music scene — a vibrant ecosystem of artists who transform noise into poetry and chaos into dialogue.
“Sound Dreams of Istanbul” serves both as a valuable record of this community and as a cinematic elegy on the relationship between dreams and music; a poetic exploration of how improvisation can bridge the gap between the unconscious and reality.
◍ Between interview, performance, and ethnographic observation, “Sound Dreams of Istanbul” is a documentary about Istanbul’s experimental and improvisational music scene. Inspired by a dream the director had, the film connects bits of Zoom chats and snapshots from everyday hangouts with musicians.
The result is reminiscent of the way Jeremy Marre approached music as a living landscape — a city that dreams through its sounds.
Artists such as Şevket Akıncı, Alper Maral, Oğuz Büyükberber, Tolga Tüzün, Korhan Erel, Volkan Ergen, SAVT, Hazal Döleneken, Koi Failure, Özün Usta, Diana Petrushka and the collective A.I.D (Art is Dead) are asked to narrate and reenact their “sound dreams” in unusual urban environments.
Through this phantasmagorical journey, Istanbul is revealed as a multi-layered soundscape, where sounds accumulate, collide, and resonate.
In this polyphonic perspective, nostalgia for the city’s past—which has seen many of the film’s characters emigrate in recent years—meets a new creative energy that seeks different ways to exist and be heard.
🔗 Website: www.sounddreamsofistanbul.com
🎬 Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ47EbIN3hY
🔷 Merve Salgar and Anıl Eraslan are two musicians of Turkish origin who divide their time between Strasbourg, Berlin, and Istanbul. Their musical practices lie at the intersection of traditional and improvisational music.
Merve works both on new forms of composition for traditional instruments (such as with the SAVT trio or her duo with Zoe Hesselton) and on more classical repertoires (such as Karmanota).
As a cellist, Anıl has traveled a path that stretches from Eastern music to free music (with collaborations such as Fred Frith and Tom Malmendier), often touching on the field of contemporary music.
“Sound Dreams of Istanbul” is his first feature film.