Yeşim Ustaoğlu

Yeşim Ustaoğlu — Biography

Yeşim Ustaoğlu was born in Sarıkamış to an ophthalmologist father and a literature-teacher mother; her father's postings meant her childhood was spent in several Anatolian towns. After studying architecture at Karadeniz Technical University, she completed a master's in restoration at Yıldız Technical University in 1985 and spent a period writing on film theory for art magazines. She entered cinema through short films; Bir Anı Yakalamak (1988), Magnafantagna (1989), Düet (1990) and Otel (1992), the last of which was purchased by the Centre Pompidou, all collected festival awards. She shot her first feature, İz, in 1994 from a script written by her husband, screenwriter Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, and the film was named best of the Istanbul and Cologne festivals.

Winning the Blue Angel and the Heinrich Böll Peace Prize at Berlin, Güneşe Yolculuk (1999) earned her a wide range of national and international honours. After founding the production company Ustaoğlu Film in 2003, she made the documentary Sırtlarındaki Hayat (2004), chronicling her research process, before the resulting feature, Bulutları Beklerken, took the Best Screenplay prize at Sundance. San Sebastián awarded Pandora'nın Kutusu (2008) both Best Film and Best Actress. Following Araf (2012) and Tereddüt (2016), she marked her 2026 return with the paired release of the feature Artakalan and the documentary Kuru Taşın Başı.