You Small Box
September 2025 - August 2026
ISTANBUL
In Istanbul, where invisible radio waves travel between continents, Ömer Madra has been starting every morning at the microphone for thirty years, saying "Hello Universe!" Founded in 1995 as a collective project, Açık Radyo (Open Radio), despite being a regional radio station, claims to be open to all the voices of the universe. One programmer reports from a war zone; another's news from a climate summit is followed by the sound of magpies imitating fire sirens during the Australian forest fires. The station's location is a center that transforms the universe's countless stories into frequencies and transmits them to that small box called the radio.
The film follows Editor-in-Chief Madra and his radio team, witnessing the radio station's final month as it faces the closure order issued by RTÜK (Radio and Television Supreme Council). While the radio team searches for ways to legally continue broadcasting, listeners send messages of support. Technology of the past and present; The stories of old and new generations seek a way to coexist. Former broadcasters, the climate where radio gives a voice, and human rights activists come for solidarity visits. While everyone's story may be different, the common thread is that the sum total of the radio environment reaches a point larger than the frequencies themselves. The film delves into the archives, tracing these stories. The images and sounds accumulated over thirty years illuminate not only the radio station's past, but also Turkey's and the world's, enabling us to make sense of the present. The story unfolds not as a story of an end—it celebrates the enduring community formed around Açık Radyo to defend media freedom and freedom of expression. The film recounts the station's closure through a participant-observer lens and the archives over the past thirty years, aiming to create cracks in the narrative and engage the audience with an emotional connection.
It attempts to see the publicity created by the invisible radio frequencies that blanket Istanbul in urban landscapes; and the bonds of community created by touching people in the details of the equipment that transmits and receives these frequencies. It also creates a poetic reality through the sonic world created by the hum of radio equipment, fragments of archive recordings, and the atmospheric sounds of the city.
As the final broadcast approaches, the radio community comes together in an unprecedented show of solidarity, sharing memories and making plans for a future beyond the airwaves. The film reveals how a frequency transforms into a community, and how that community transcends its own medium.
