This study aims to examine how Istanbul, the ‘city of immigrants’, is represented in the internal migration films between 1980 and 2009 in Turkish cinema. To this end, historical sociological data of the internal migration process (immigrants being employed in informal labor sector, living in shanty towns, etc.) and tropes are employed in the film analysis. Most repeated tropes in the films are the city’s not welcoming the newcomers, identification of the city with a woman, and the townsmen closing their doors to immigrants a while later. In terms of cultural representation, the city/ Istanbul is identified with death, loss, and struggle in internal migration films. Arriving in the city by various ways, not only by train, the immigrants generally find death in Istanbul. Istanbul is the city of the dead, not the living! Film characters either reside in a shanty house or a block of apartments, or they might also appear as homeless. They might have various reasons to migrate to the city but the basic reason is to find a job, although they are temporary ones without social security.