Antoine the Fortunate

Based on Antoine Köpe’s private memoirs and unseen archive collection of unprecedented scope and beauty, Antoine the Fortunate tells the story of survival of a man and his family during the most turbulent times of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of modern Turkey.
Antoine was an Austro-Hungarian citizen of the Ottoman Empire who witnessed the Balkan Wars, fought in Palestine during WW1, experienced the occupation of Constantinople by the Allied forces and the turmoil which lead to the Kemalist Revolution and the declaration of the Turkish republic. His story is told through his memoirs and personal archive, which he started as a child in the early 20th century and continued throughout his life, including hundreds of never before seen home movies, photographs, sketches, comic strips, newspaper clippings, audio recordings and letters.
The documentary charts the rise and fall of the fortunes of this ordinary man and his family, as they struggle to survive and find their place in a changing world, helping us to make sense of the forces which swept through Turkey in the early 20th Century and transformed the lives of its inhabitants. Ultimately, it’s a first person tale about coming to terms with childhood, identity, and memory, but also a historical record of the transformation of Europe.

  • DIRECTOR Nefin Dinç
  • CO-WRITTEN BY Apostolos Karakassis
  • EDITING Angelos Angelidis
  • MUSIC Carla Pallone
  • ANIMATION / VFX Antonis Kotzias / Yafka
  • PRODUCERS Rea Apostolides, Yuri Averof (ANEMON), Clara Vuillermoz (Les Films du Balibari), Heinrich Mayer (Epo-Film)
  • IN CO-PRODUCTION WITH ORF, Cosmote TV, Histoire TV
  • WITH THE SUPPORT OF Creative Europe, EKOME, CNC, Region Pays de la Loire, Procirep-Angoa, MOIN Film Fund, MEDIENBOARD BERLIN, American University