Screening Date: 4 February 2026, Wednesday, 8:00 pm / 1 March 2026, Sunday, 6:30 pm

Director: Peter Watkins

Screenplay:  Peter Watkins

Cast: Patrick Boland, Kent Foreman, Catherine Quittner

USA / 1970 / 91 min. / Color / English / Turkish Subtitles

Under President Richard Nixon, the United States is in the midst of protests against the Vietnam War. Under a new law, the US government offers those it has arrested, members of the Communist Party, civil rights activists, anti-war protesters, and representatives of the opposition, a choice: rot in a federal prison or complete an 80-kilometer desert course  while being pursued by security forces to reach the US flag. Those who choose to go to the punishment park find themselves in a manhunt where reaching the flag is nearly impossible and they cannot escape the violence of the security forces.

Screened at the Cannes and New York Film Festivals but not released in the US for many years, Punishment Park, with its documentary format that maximizes the sense of reality, is not only one of the harshest political critiques ever made about the US, but also one of the most uncompromising films ever made about state violence. A scenario that has moved from dystopia to reality since 1970, it is a film that confirms Watkins’s suspicions about governments and the state apparatus.