During the 1960s and 1970s many Turkish films dealing with Byzantium were produced. The protagonists of these films were usually semi-historical/semi-legendary characters such as Battal Gazi, an eighth/ninth-century Arab frontier warrior. This paper proposes a cross-examination of the Battal Gazi films with the Battalname, a medieval prose work on the deeds of the same frontier warrior, in order to find out what Byzantium represented for the audience of these films in Turkey. This representation is important because the films played a crucial role in shaping the contemporary perception of Byzantium in Turkey.