Özgür Doğan

Özgür Doğan — Biography

Born in a Kurdish village in Varto, Muş, Özgür Doğan spoke only Kurdish until the age of six; because the village had only a primary school, he and his siblings studied in turn with different uncles, finishing middle school in Trabzon, studying for a time in Konya, and then moving to Ankara for high school. He graduated from Ankara University's Faculty of Communication in 2001, the same year he became a research assistant at Middle East Technical University, where he completed a master's degree in Media and Cultural Studies in 2004.

Prompted partly by his own brother's imprisonment, he began working with Orhan Eskiköy on a joint project, and in 2003 the two decided to make a documentary about "miscommunication"; funding problems delayed it until September 2007, when support from the Greenhouse Documentary Development Workshop, the Sundance Documentary Fund and the Netherlands' Jan Vrijman Fund let them complete On the Way to School after nine months of work. The film won several festival awards, including Best First Film at the Golden Orange Film Festival, and reached Turkish cinemas in October 2009.

His second major work, Voice of My Father, reached cinemas in November 2012 and brought him a wider audience; alongside directing he has also worked as a producer and co-producer, and his films have screened at events such as the Ankara International Film Festival.