What’s in a name? For Adana’s iconic film festival, a return to its original name — Golden Boll, which takes its name from the rounded seed of cotton grown abundantly in the region — after three years was a major political victory.

Adana's previous mayor, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party's (MHP) Huseyin Sozlu, had changed the name of the festival, which debuted in 1969, to the International Adana Film Festival, removing the symbolic Golden Boll from its name. Sozlu said the purpose of the change was to improve the promotion of the city.

In July, Adana's newly elected Mayor Zeydan Karalar of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) thanked the city's municipal council for reverting back to the original name for the festival that takes place the last week of September every year. “We will transform the organization into a strong festival without severing it from its past,” Karalar said in a statement. 

A sprawling city of 1.75 million simmering with a unique energy, Adana is lined with towering palm trees and bountiful citrus trees. Though better known for its lofty position as Turkey's kebab capital — perhaps the country's most beloved kebab, a spicy grilled skewer of ground lamb or beef, is named after the city — Adana also enjoys a rich cultural legacy and is the hometown of some of Turkey's most legendary novelists, directors and actors, the faces of whom are memorialized on a Walk of Fame-esque stretch on the sidewalk just outside the city's state theater building.