Malatya, a feature-length documentary film


This was the official website for Malatya, a feature-length documentary film.
On April 18, 2007 five young Muslim men tortured and killed three leaders of the small church of Malatya, Turkey, inside their Bible distribution office. This is their story...

 


Content is from the site's 2011 archived pages, as well as from other outside sources.
Available on Amazon Prime in DVD form.
Length: approx. 76 minutes

If you are depressed, weary or bitter... If you need hope, endurance and to forgive watch this film. It will change your life...

AMAZON REVIEWS

5.0 out of 5 stars
A Tear-Jerker and Wake-Up Call
Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2010
Format: DVD
Malatya is a shocking report about the oppression of Christians in modern-day Turkey. The eyewitness accounts and testimonies by family and friends of the martyrs will certainly touch the hearts of many viewers. Do keep in mind that this documentary was created for ministry purposes, rather than for presenting an objective account of a Muslim conspiracy to kill three Christians.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Documentary that tells a powerful story
Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2013
Format: DVD
Nolan Dean did an absolutely fantastic job on telling the story of Malatya. I highly recommend purchasing the DVD. This is a video that you will want everyone in your sphere to watch. Excellent job, Nolan.



Malatya Documentary Trailer

In 2007 three members of Malatya Church in Turkey were murdered: Necati Aydin, Tilmann Geske & Ugur Yuksel who were the first martyrs of the modern Turkish Church.

On April 18, 2007 five young Muslim men tortured and killed three leaders of the small church of Malatya, Turkey, inside their Bible distribution office. Turkey is the land of the Early Church—the land of Abraham, Ephesus, and the Seven Churches of Revelation. Now it was a land of modern martyrs.

The murders sent shockwaves throughout Turkey, devastating a remnant of Turkish Christians who live among millions who oppose their very existence. And yet, in the midst of all this chaos, the martyred men’s widows made a brave decision that revealed the mercy of God as never before to an awestruck nation.

 

Editor's Note:One of the fascinating side stories related to the release of this documentary involved how Google mishandled its inclusion in the search. In the US, searches for the title yielded restaurants and coffee shops and it took intervention by the search expert Bob Sakayama at TNG/Earthling to set things right. Every once in a while Google messes up and delivers the wrong results, in this case the problem was pretty massive in its irrelevance. This problem did go away, but it probably cost the film makers some eyeballs that would have been good in the early days after the release.

 

PRESS RELEASE

New Documentary Film on the First Martyrs of the Turkish Church DVD

JUSTIN TAYLOR | APRIL 13, 2009 | www.thegospelcoalition.org

April 18, 2007, two Turkish Christians and a German missionary were tortured and killed inside a Bible Publishing house in Malatya, Turkey.

Summer 2008, two young filmmakers from Texas set out to create Malatya, a documentary exploring how three Christian martyrs have shaken the nation’s roots.

Necati Aydin, Uğur Yuksel and Tilmann Geske were tied to their chairs, tortured with butcher knives and killed for worshiping Christ. Semse Aydin and Susanne Geske, the wives of Necati and Tilmann, both contributed to the film. Echoing Christ’s words from the cross, they’ve publicly forgiven those guilty of their husbands’ deaths. Resources for Christian counseling are scarce in Turkey, a country of nearly 72 million, 99.8 percent of which is Muslim. This has left their surviving families and friends with little human support to lean on in a nationwide church of around 3,000 believers. The joy they find is purely in the hope of their sovereign God working through this time of trial for His glory and their good.

Testimony from leaders of the Turkish church shows even before the martyrdom, Turkish Christians faced persecution. They were unlawfully jailed, interrogated about their activities and even tortured. The deaths of these men have crossed a new line. Attacks and attempted murders have increased since the Malatya martyrdom. The current leader of the Turkish Protestant Alliance, Zekai Tanyar, told the filmmakers, “Before this, I would have said that we do suffer, but I wouldn’t call the Turkish Church ‘the Persecuted Church,’ but all of a sudden, we are the persecuted church.”

Turkish pastors revealed to the filmmakers the rise in persecution following the martyrdom has led many in the church to quit attending their fellowships or fall away from their faith all together. Others however have grown bolder in ministry, both in the sharing of their faith and serving in their churches, fully aware any church could be the next victim of violence.

Malatya also covers how the ongoing trial against the murder suspects has gained nationwide coverage in Turkey, where religious freedom is established by law. While some Turks think any Christian in Turkey must be a foreigner, and likely a subversive, thus championing the martyrdom in the name of patriotism, others despise the martyrdom as a hate crime. Turks now face a cultural dilemma: for the first since the founding of their republic, Turkish Christians were martyred.

Malatya is scheduled for DVD release across the globe April 18, 2009, the two-year anniversary of the martyrdom. Screenings are scheduled from Austin to Brazil, the UK, Germany, South Africa, Australia and more.

 

REVIEW

New Documentary Film: Malatya

August 21, 2010 | www.challies.com/

Is it estimated that in all of Turkey, a nation of almost 74 million, there are only a few thousand Christians. From their infancy Turks are taught that to be a Turk is to be a Muslim and to be anything else is treason. The few Christians who stand firm in their faith are viewed as terrorists, as insurgents who wish to overthrow the government. They are harrassed and slandered and sometimes fear for their lives.

On April 18, 2007, three Turkish Christians were murdered inside a Bible publishing office in the city of Malatya. The men who killed them were barely men at all; they were Muslim teenagers who had posed as seekers interested in learning more about the Christian faith. Each was found and arrested with a note in his pocket reading, “We did this for our country. They were attacking our religion.”

The three men who had been killed had first been bound at the wrists and ankles, they had been tortured, they had been stabbed with butcher knives. Finally, with the police at the door of the office, the teens had sliced the throats of these Christians, killing two immediately and fatally wounding the third.

Malatya is a DVD that tells the story of these men, these martyrs: Necati Aydin, a husband and father and pastor of the Malatya church; Tilmann Geske, a German citizen, a husband and father who had served the Turkish church for 10 years; and Ugur Yuksel, a young Christian, soon to be married, who was being discipled by Necati. It looks to their families, their widows, to learn about the aftermath of these attacks in which the wives chose to extend unilateral forgiveness to the attackers; it looks to the colleagues, the fellow pastors and the men they discipled, to see the impact of these attacks on the church in Turkey. And it looks to the lives of the men themselves to show that even today Christians are martyred, killed for their faith.

Malatya tells this story well, it tells it artistically, it tells it faithfully. It is a sad tale and yet it is the kind of tale we, as Christians, must expect to hear. It serves to prove that the message of the gospel, the good news, remains bad news to those who resist it. So often it is only through trials, tribulations and martyrdom that the gospel advances.

 

IMBd REVIEW

Malatya: Heroes of the Faith

23 August 2012 | by Old-School-Biker | www.imdb.com//

Malatya is an important piece of storytelling in that it explains the tragic deaths of the first martyrs of the modern Turkish church. In the same way the Book of Acts explains historically what happened to the very first martyr of the Christian faith, Stephen, this documentary fast forwards nearly 2,000 years to explain the details of modern day persecution and martyrdom.

Quite remarkably this documentary is not about finger pointing nor blame. It is a story about forgiveness and hope. It focuses on the bravery of a small national church and their journey of faithfulness. And ultimately, it is not about us at all, but rather it reveals the heart of God in reaching every nation with His gift of redemption.

I honestly don't think it is easy for any human to deal emotionally with the topic of martyrdom. But it really is not about how we die, but how we ought to live that really matters. I applaud the creators of Malatya for a sensitive yet honest account of what happened. This is the type of work that will make you look deep inside of yourself and ask the tough questions of what are you really living for. Is life all about me, or is there a greater purpose worth living for and laying one's life down for?

 


MalatyaFilm.com