The story of cinema’s inception in the Ottoman Empire is a nice one. Cinema, at its arrival, was a foreign invention that attracted its audiences through its novelty and difference. But once the films started to be used for delivering news, war propaganda, military training, and especially telling stories through narrative cinema, the late Ottoman and especially early Republican intellectuals and politicians were interested in such capabilities of the medium. Thus, at a time when developing a new understanding of the nation and hence the propagation of a new national culture was seen as crucial and imminent, there were multiple discussions and projects on imported films and local productions. This chapter focuses on the early Republican cinema by looking at different aspects of film production, distribution, exhibition, and reception. The localization of a non-native technological novelty, the Turkification of imported films, and the adaptation of local and foreign texts or films will be discussed. This will involve first a discussion on how a foreign and exotic medium is received by the multicultural locals. Then, the construction and rewriting of a national history will be discussed through translation and localization of cinematic texts, before touching on how local narratives and stars are constructed.