Remzi Jöntürk

Remzi Jöntürk — Biography

The son of an army officer, Remzi Jöntürk was born in 1936 in Erzincan, where his father had been posted; he attended Kuleli Military High School and later studied at the Istanbul Institute of Journalism and the Academy of Fine Arts. He entered Yeşilçam as a set designer and sign painter, and his sharp eye for observation soon earned him small acting parts before he became an assistant to director Süreyya Duru; he made his own directing debut in 1964 with Zımba Gibi Delikanlı, starring Yılmaz Güney. In 1971 he founded the production company Polat Film, and over a career of more than four decades he directed 72 films and wrote the screenplays for 44 of them, often for his own productions. Together with Cüneyt Arkın he made the Malkoçoğlu series and the Adam Trilogy entries Yarınsız Adam and Yıkılmayan Adam, among the best-known works of 1970s Turkish psychedelic-action cinema. His 1974 film Zindan was banned in Germany in 1988. Jöntürk died on 2 September 1987 in a traffic accident, along with the film's producer Halis Şenol, while returning from location filming on Afrodit.