Gilgamesh: She Who Saw the Deep

Presented as the August 2026 edition of Staff Picks, Gilgamesh: She Who Saw the Deep approaches The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest surviving works of literature, as a living text. Its earliest Sumerian versions were composed in Mesopotamia more than four thousand years ago. The epic describes the journey of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, one of the world’s earliest cities. Following the death of Enkidu, his closest friend, Gilgamesh sets out in search of immortality. Part god and part human, he encounters figures including the goddess Ishtar, the Scorpion People, and Utnapishtim, who, like Noah, survived the Great Flood by building an ark.

Filmed in Mardin, Dara, and Hasankeyf, in the wider Tigris region of southeastern Turkey, the film brings Gilgamesh’s journey into a landscape where archaeological remains coexist with contemporary cities and ongoing political transformations. Inspired by Sumerian cosmology and the philosophy of Cosmism, the film asks whether immortality can be understood beyond individual survival, as a collective relation to the dead and to an unfinished past.

Accompanied by an original score by Alva Noto, Gilgamesh: She Who Saw the Deep is a meditation on life, death, friendship, love, and immortality. The film is in Kurdish and Turkish and features an all-woman cast of Kurdish actors from Amed Theater in Diyarbakır.

Read a conversation with Pelin Tan and Anton Vidokle about the film in the upcoming issue of e-flux Film Notes here.