Levent Kazak

Levent Kazak — Biography

Born on 5 May 1967 in Ankara to a family of Circassian (Adige) descent, Levent Kazak graduated from Beşiktaş Atatürk High School in 1985 and went on to study English Language and Literature at Boğaziçi University, painting, sculpture and theatre costume/set design at Mimar Sinan University, and Greek and Italian at Istanbul University, alongside a theatre education at Marmara University's Conservatory.

He entered professional theatre in 1986, sharing the stage in close to thirty productions with masters such as Altan Erbulak, Ali Poyrazoğlu, Alpay İzer and Savaş Dinçel, while also working as a writer, translator and adapter. In 1989 he helped create the series Kim Bunlar with a young team; broadcast during Turkey's single-channel era, it became a classic of Turkish television history, after which he turned to children's theatre and children's programming.

He wrote the screenplays for O Şimdi Asker (2003), Neredesin Firuze (2004), O Şimdi Mahkum (2005) and Ezel Akay's Hacivat Karagöz Neden Öldürüldü? (2006), the last of which won him best screenplay at the 13th Adana Altın Koza Film Festival; he also acted in films such as Hemşo (2001) and Senden Bana Kalan (2015). A co-founder, with Barış Pirhasan, Gül Dirican and Aylin Doğan, of the Senaryo Stüdyosu screenwriting school, Kazak has also run the social projects Hayal Kurmak Serbest with SENDER in prisons and Çorba Çeşmesi with the Akşehir municipality.