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Social Media Favorite Cappadocia: A Wonderland in Peril?
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Social Media Favorite Cappadocia: A Wonderland in Peril?

28 MIN · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]
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Cappadocia's carved rock towers draw more than four million visitors a year, and this DW film asks what happens to a landscape once it becomes a backdrop for Instagram. Photographer Mustafa Köse makes his living staging the perfect sunrise shot with hot air balloons drifting over the valleys, but says "cultural tourism is dead" now that visitors want only a photo to post. Zehra Demircan, who runs the cave hotel her father carefully preserved, describes a group of guests who spent an entire week never once sightseeing, just shooting content. Local activist Mükremin Tokmak documents the toll of a new highway cut through the historic valleys, tracking the damage to centuries-old rock-carved churches and arguing that unchecked tourism development is eroding the UNESCO-listed site he has fought for years to protect. Through interviews and footage shot in the fairy chimneys, hotels, and construction sites, the film weighs the prosperity social media tourism brings against what it is quietly destroying.