Mayıs Rukel is a Turkish artist, writer, and filmmaker. His work explores magical research, liberatory remembering, radical pedagogies, decolonial archiving, and befriending ghosts. He received the GRA Award for Autonomous Arts 2020 and Mondriaan Fonds Kunstenaar Start 2023. His short fiction The Pendant was featured at the Nederlands Film Festival 2020, and his feature-length fiction-documentary Movement Song had its world premiere at the IFFR 2026. His debut novel, Güneşhamağı, was published by Ithaki in April 2026.
He participated in the research group Tactics of the Plot in 2025, where a diverse group of artists, researchers, and activists examined their practices through Sylvia Wynter’s concept of the plot. In 2022, he participated in the Atelier AM residency, and the resulting multimedia performance ‘To get from one place to another’ was shown at the Corrosia Theater in Almere. He holds a BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and an MFA from the Sandberg Institute’s Ecologies of Transformation, where he explored the role of art and artists in social change.
In February-March 2026, Rukel received the Mondriaan Fonds Voucher International to organise public events with Taragaon Next and Sattya Collective in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Rukel is the co-facilitator of Radical Roots, a community-building art project based on stories of food and migration in the refugee centers across the Netherlands. His collaborations include KABK, TENT Rotterdam, and IMPAKT, and his work has been reviewed in De Volkskrant, Het Parool, Metropolis M, Cine21, (A)WAKE, Filmkrant, and more.
Link to Rukel's documentation of his work in Nepal: https://www.mayisrukel.com/nepal-2026
The story in 'Movement Song' by Rukel was of interest to both Taragaon Next and Sattya Collective. Both organizations decided to host different programs, each supplementing and dissecting the film and Rukel's process in creating the film. A total of 6 programs were planned and executed during the months of February and March.
Sattya Collective hosted 2-day workshop on filmmaking on a budget and a screening of the film. They hosted the workshop on February 8 and 9. Participants were encouraged to bring their own film projects or ideas with Mayıs providing feedback, guidance, and practical tools to help take your project further. Through interactive talks, guided exercises, group discussions, and feedback sessions, participants will explore ideas together and begin shaping their own film projects.
Other than these collaborations, Rukel also went on to do collaborations with Oscar International Film School and The Literary Lantern.
Taragaon's first event with Rukel was a collaboration with Quixote's Cove, where participants were given reading materials that directly correlated with the film, Movement Song. A total of 12 participants were present and works by James Baldwin and Audre Lorde were read, dissected and discussed with Rukel's process of the creation of the film, the archiving process and how the stories of these two writers tie into the film itself.
Participants read the following works:
1. Movement Song, poem by Audre Lorde
2. Poetry is Not a Luxury, Audre Lorde
3. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic is Power, Audre Lorde
4. Giovanni's Room, Chapter I - James Baldwin
On February 20, Rukel had a discussion with different groups of filmmaking students and aspiring filmmakers and discussed about his artistic journey.
Rukel also talked about art school and how it is not the only route to becoming an artist, even though academia has value when it offers mentorship, feedback, and community, finding useful information in boredomoredom as useful information, self-honesty in building a practice, the importance of pivoting, leaving behind what is not right; listening for what genuinely calls you. The following topics were also discussed:
- Studying film language independently, building cinematic language outside formal training
- Delays can carry meaning
- Baldwin’s ties to Turkey and the south of France
- The research process for Movement Song
- Ethics in making work. The values at the core of a project. Histories and entanglements that shape the maker and the work.
- Responsibility toward documentary subjects.
- Dignity as a visual language. How framing, sound, angle, and editing can dignify someone.
- Being selective about where work is shown.
- Protecting the preciousness of the work.
For this workshop, we took aspects of movement and music and created a workshop where participants were able to use it as a form of connection and expression. We collaborated with Maitri Music Therapy Nepal on March 11 to create a workshop where participants were taken on an auditory journey via the soundtrack of Movement Song composed by Patrick Walinga. Participants were asked to feel the music and move their bodies in ways that resonated with the emotions triggered by the music.
We started off with warm up exercises and games for everyone to get comfortable being in a space with each other. With other conversations and exercises, we were able to create a space where consent and understanding were at the core and were able to pair up participants so we could share our musical interpretations with each other and then with the group. We tried our best to answer the questions of:
What shape does yearning take?
What gesture communicates affection?
Does grief have a melody?
What does tenderness ask of the body?
Taragaon held 3 film screenings of Movement Song, two of which were hosted specifically for students of Rupy's International School. Our final screening, which was open to the public, was attended by participants from various different backgrounds.
In the gallery of the Taragaon Next, an installation consisting of research material, filming schedules, archival images, film props, and portraits of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde was present for the visitors to peruse, and to access a deeper understanding of how the film came to be.
