Ebru Ceylan

Ebru Ceylan — Biography

Ebru Ceylan, born Ebru Yapıcı, was born on January 26, 1976, in Ankara. After studying cinema and television at Marmara University, she completed a graduate degree in film production at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, having already begun working as a photographer in the early 1990s.

Her 1998 short film "Kıyıda" was selected for the short-film competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and she went on to direct further shorts such as "Çukurda" (1999) and "Mamak Hikayesi" (2001). She appeared in a small role in her husband Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant (2002) and later took on one of the lead roles, Bahar, in Climates (2006).

Beginning with Three Monkeys (2008), Ceylan became a regular co-writer on her husband's films, contributing to the screenplays of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), the Palme d'Or-winning Winter Sleep (2014), The Wild Pear Tree (2018) and About Dry Grasses (2023); her work on Winter Sleep earned her a European Film Award nomination for Best Screenwriter. She served on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 2024 and continues to pursue photography, exhibiting her work in various shows.