EPIIC Film Series: Zenne Dancer

An unlikely trio, an unshakeable friendship and family boundaries that prove deadly to breach. A feature film about an unusual trio: DANIEL, a German photo-journalist in Istanbul without much knowledge about Middle Eastern values. CAN, a flamboyant, out and proud male belly dancer with lots of love and support from his family, and AHMET born to an eastern and conservative family whose quest for honesty and liberty results in a tragic end. ZENNE Dancer was inspired by the true story of Ahmet YILDIZ, who was murdered for being gay at the age 26 by his own father in 2008.

With an introduction and discussion by Sa’ed Adel Atshan.

Sa’ed Atshan has been a Lecturer in Peace and Justice Studies for more than five years at Tufts University and he has earned four “distinction in teaching” and several advising and mentoring prizes from Harvard. He has been awarded multiple graduate fellowships, including from the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Woodrow Wilson National Foundation, Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. He is the recipient of a Soros Fellowship for New Americans and a Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace. He has worked for the American Civil Liberties Union, the UN High Commission on Refugees, Human Rights Watch, Seeds of Peace, the Palestinian Negotiations Affairs Department, and the Government of Dubai. Atshan is also a member of Al-Qaws, an organization promoting LGBTQ rights for Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories. He is a postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.