Audience: Emotional Crossroads—Exploring Contradictory Feelings and Motivations of Turkish Film Festival Experiences Across Germany

This chapter explores the emotional engagement, experiences, and motivation of Turkish immigrant audiences attending Turkish film festivals in Germany, focusing on three specific events: the International Frankfurt Turkish Film Festival, Munich Turkish Film Days, and Nuremberg Turkey/Germany Film Festival. This research design involves a two-stage approach, incorporating both survey and focus group discussions. These festivals evoke diverse emotions, revealing the dynamic interplay between belonging and exclusion and the constant oscillation between a sense of “Turkness” and feelings of otherness. These contradictions between personal identity, social identity, and collective identity and the differentiation between inside and outside the festival underscore the unstable and fluid relationship between festivals and their audiences.