Ebru Ceylan

Ebru Ceylan — Biography

Ebru Ceylan (née Yapıcı) was born on 26 January 1976 in Ankara. She began working in photography in 1992 through the AFSAD collective, well before her formal studies, exhibiting in group shows and winning awards, then studied cinema and television at Marmara University before completing a graduate degree in film production at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.

Her 1998 short Kıyıda was selected for the competition section at Cannes, and she went on directing shorts with Çukurda and Mamak Hikâyesi. She had a small role in her husband Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant (2002), then took a lead part as Bahar in Climates (2006), and combined art direction with a screenwriting credit on Three Monkeys (2008).

She carried the writing partnership into Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) and the Palme d'Or-winning Winter Sleep (2014), earning a European Film Award nomination for the latter; after a pause, the collaboration resumed, now also crediting screenwriter Akın Aksu, on The Wild Pear Tree (2018) and About Dry Grasses (2023). She served on the Cannes Film Festival jury in 2024 and continues to work as a photographer.