She was born in a small Kurdish village near Mardin in Turkey. She worked as a reporter for Dicle News Agency for six consecutive years. In 2006, she began to shoot her own short films and documentaries, which focus mainly on the cultural, gender and identity issues. She received various national and international awards with her first short film T... Read More

She was born in a small Kurdish village near Mardin in Turkey. She worked as a reporter for Dicle News Agency for six consecutive years. In 2006, she began to shoot her own short films and documentaries, which focus mainly on the cultural, gender and identity issues. She received various national and international awards with her first short film The Last Game (2006). Her first feature documentary I Flew, You Stayed (2012) has won a number of awards, including the Turkish Association of Film Critics Documentary of the Year. The short film called Houses with Small Windows that she co-wrote and acted in was selected for Official Competition at the Venice Film Festival (2013) and won the European Short Film Award. She is the author of the book Rejisör Atıf Yılmaz (2007), and the first book regarding Kurdish Cinema “Statelessness, Border and Death” (2009). Her MA thesis has been published under the name of Yeşim Ustaoğlu: Water, Death and Journey (2010). She has produced and directed her own works also participated in other projects as a co-writer, researcher, interviewer, video editor, translator (Kurdish, Turkish, English) and an actor and script supervisor. Studied cinema in Turkey and completed her second MA in Digital Documentary in Royal Holloway University of London. Based in London since 2013. Read Less