An observational documentary on the body, memory and the human search for meaning.
Human in Quest brings together three lives around a shared search for meaning. Rather than focusing on singular turning points, the film traces ongoing processes of transformation shaped by the body, personal limits, and lived experience. Emerging from the director's own personal inquiry, the film begins with two women on spiritual paths and expands to include a third character, whose physical limitations open another dimension of the search—where the boundaries of the body reshape the direction of inner transformation. Horses play a central role in each life, recurring throughout the film as carriers of intuition, memory, and the bond between human and nature. The camera accompanies its characters without directing them, allowing space for doubt, vulnerability, and reflection. Though their lives never directly intersect, they resonate within a shared field of experience. Through quiet gestures and everyday decisions, Human in Quest opens a space where individual journeys echo a wider human inquiry—remaining open, rather than resolved.
Director — Aslı Akdağ
Aslı Akdağ is a documentary director and producer who brings together the disciplines of law and cinema. Her expertise in copyright and intellectual property law shapes her approach to representation, ethics, responsibility and witnessing. Holding a master's degree in Film and Drama, she explores themes of body, memory, identity and the search for meaning through the relationship of trust she builds with her characters. Working in an observational mode, she seeks less to provide definitive answers than to make visible the relationship a person builds with themselves, their past and their surroundings. Her first feature documentary The Waiting premiered at the 58th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize, and went on to win Best Documentary at the Ankara Film Festival and the Golden Saffron Documentary Film Festival before streaming on MUBI. Young Wrestlers, which she produced, premiered at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival, winning a Generation Kplus Special Mention as well as the Behlül Dal Special Jury Prize and Best Editing at the Antalya Film Festival. Her most recent short documentary My Mother's Miracle premiered at the DokuBaku International Documentary Film Festival. She is currently developing the screenplay of her first fiction feature, Kingdom of Mists.
Awards & Festivals
- World Premiere — DokuBaku International Documentary Film Festival, October 2026