Emin Alper

Emin Alper — Biography

Born in the Ermenek district of Karaman on 13 August 1974, Emin Alper started at Boğaziçi University in civil engineering before switching to economics, and later earned a doctorate in Modern Turkish History at the same university's Atatürk Institute; he still teaches at Istanbul Technical University and writes on cinema and politics for several journals. Struck by Emir Kusturica's Time of the Gypsies at eighteen, he turned toward filmmaking, and describes his own style as a tension between "paranoia and dream versus reality," often built around sociological and political allegory. After the short films Mektup (2005), made through TRT's Young Filmmakers program, and the award-winning Rıfat (2006), his feature debut Beyond the Hill (2012) collected sixteen awards that year, including the Caligari Prize at the Berlinale. Frenzy (2015) won the Special Jury Prize at Venice and a Best Director award from the Turkish film critics' association, while A Tale of Three Sisters (2019) competed in the Berlinale's main section. Burning Days (2022) premiered in Cannes' Un Certain Regard, and months later the state cinema authority demanded back the production funding it had granted, a move widely linked to controversy over the film's LGBTQ+ themes. He followed it with Salvation, which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2026 Berlinale, and has since moved into television with the HBO Max series İnsanlar.