It will be a while before that film, Honey by Semih Kaplanoglu, arrives on Belgian screens, but thanks to Cinema Novo we can see the director's previous film, Milk. This tells the story of a young man with ambitions to write poetry whose tenuous grip on reality is threatened by his imminent military service and the suggestion that his widowed mother may remarry.

Other prize winners in the festival's Turkish selection include The Wrong Rosary by Mahmut Fazil Coskun, which picked up a Tiger award at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2009, and Pandora’s Box, which won awards in San Sebastian in 2008 for director Yesim Ustaoglu and actress Tsilla Chelton. The first is a gentle tale about an unassuming muezzin, recently moved to Istanbul, who falls for his equally shy neighbour Clara, a Christian. The second recounts the disruption caused when an old woman with failing faculties is brought from a mountain village to Istanbul so that her children can look after her.

Cinema Novo has gone for the more artistic side of the Turkish film industry, which also produces a good many popular comedies and thrillers. "The art-house movies are not as flashy as the commercial movies," Keereman explains. "More and more Turkish directors choose personal themes, such as the experiences of their youth."

There also appears to be a greater degree of freedom, with films able to tackle subjects that would previously have attracted government disapproval or even censorship. "You have movies about Kurdish themes, which was a bit difficult a few years ago, and also more and more movies about women."

Other highlights from the 11-film focus on Turkish cinema include Istanbul Tales, five contemporary fairy tales written by Ümit Ünal and directed by himself and four other filmmakers, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan's story of a ruptured relationship, Climates.

There is also one old film, Dry Summer by Metin Erksan, about a man who claims one summer that all the water in the village belongs to him, bringing him into conflict with his brother. The film dropped from view after winning the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1964, but has recently been restored and released by the World Cinema Foundation. "The style is a bit strange, but the photography is very beautiful," says Keereman. "You could compare it to an old Hollywood movie, from the 1930s, perhaps."

There is a chance for one of two recent Turkish films to take home a prize in Cinema Novo's own international competition. 10 to 11 by Pelin Esmer is about a compulsive collector who finds himself in conflict with his neighbours, while Men on the Bridge by Asli Özge concerns the lives and longings of three men who work on the Bosporus Bridge.

The world in Bruges

Cinema Novo is a wide-ranging festival, with the ambitious goal of introducing the public to new films from Africa, Asia and Latin America. So as well as films from Turkey, its prize competition includes work from Armenia, Mexico, Chile, South Korea and Iran. None have plans to be shown in cinemas in Belgium, and the Camera Novo prize comes with an €8,000 incentive for the distributor who picks up the winner.

African films are thin on the ground this year, but one must-see double bill brings together two unexpected perspectives on the continent. Nora, by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, presents an autobiographical performance about growing up in Zimbabwe from dancer and choreographer Nora Chipaumire. Each set piece is in contemporary dance style but plays out in an African landscape, from the open country to village squares and school buildings. But it was shot in Mozambique rather than Zimbabwe, since Chipaumire's home country has not been so welcoming in recent years.

The second part of the bill is Saint Louis Blues by Dyana Gaye, which turns a journey by seven characters sharing a “bush taxi” in Senegal into an all-singing, alldancing musical that draws strongly on the style of Jacques Demy. The result is unexpected, yet extremely pleasing. Both films have English subtitles.

Other highlights in a packed festival include a collection of films critical of contemporary life in Iran. No One Knows About Persian Cats has already come out in Brussels and deserves to be seen for its energetic portrait of the underground music scene, filmed on the run by Bahman Ghobadi. Also shot guerrilla- style was My Tehran for Sale by Granaz Moussavi, about an aspiring actress who longs to escape the city for Australia.

The selection is completed by life-on-the streets drama Tehroun by Nader Takmil Homayoun and About Elly by Asghar Farhadi, which concerns a man in search of an Iranian wife after his marriage to a German woman fails. The festival's closing film is also from Iran: Women Without Men by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari goes back to 1953, when the Shah seized power, to tell the story of four women trying to break out of unhappy lives.

Cinema Novo
11-21 March
Lumière and Ciné Liberty
Bruges
www.cinemanovo.be