Yılmaz Güney

Yılmaz Güney — Biography

Yılmaz Güney (born Yılmaz Pütün; 1 April 1937 in Yenice, Adana – 9 September 1984 in Paris) was a Turkish actor, director, screenwriter, producer, editor, writer and poet, and one of the most influential figures in his country's cinema. Described in the sources as being of Kurdish and Zaza descent, he shot his films in Turkish and, from a left-wing standpoint, devoted much of his work to the hardships of working people and to portraying Kurdish society, its culture and its language.

He abandoned the law degree he had started at Ankara University and went on to study economics in Istanbul. His screen career began in 1959 with acting roles. In 1961 he was jailed on the accusation that a story he had written at nineteen constituted communist propaganda; Turkish accounts give his punishment as eighteen months in prison followed by six months of internal exile. Once free, he rose to become one of Yeşilçam's most bankable stars and came to be identified with the nickname drawn from the Çirkin Kral pictures he headlined.

He took up directing in 1966 with At Avrat Silah; Hudutların Kanunu, for which he wrote the screenplay and played the lead, established his reputation, and in 1968 he set up his own production company. According to Turkish sources, while that film was being shot he was driving drunk in Şanlıurfa and ran over a child, who died. In 1967 he married the actress Nebahat Çehre; the sources describe violent episodes in the marriage and report that the couple divorced soon after Güney drove his car into Çehre in 1968, leaving her injured. Two years later he married Fatoş Güney.

Although he began with adventure and action fare, from the late 1960s Güney shifted toward socially and politically engaged storytelling. His first significant achievement in this direction was Umut (1970), which he directed, followed by Ağıt, Baba, Arkadaş and Endişe. In 1972 he received a prison sentence for assisting militants of the People's Liberation Party-Front of Turkey, but regained his freedom through the general amnesty of 1974.

Later that year, in Adana for the filming of Endişe, he was accused of responsibility for the death of the judge Sefa Mutlu. Turkish sources ascribe the killing to him outright; one source notes that he rejected the accusation, while the Greek source says the death came after a brawl. The punishment is reported inconsistently as well: nineteen years in the Turkish and German texts, twenty-four years later reduced to eighteen in the Greek one. He kept writing behind bars; Sürü (1978), from his screenplay, took the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 1979, and Düşman (1980) also dates from this period.

Following the coup of 12 September 1980, he left Isparta semi-open prison on furlough in 1981 and never returned, escaping abroad and settling in France. Yol, for which he wrote the script and handled the production and editing while his assistant Şerif Gören directed the shooting, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival; French sources describe the prize as shared. Duvar (1983), shot in France, became his final film. In 1983 he was stripped of his Turkish citizenship; that same year he joined the Kurdish poets Cigerxwîn and Abdurrahman Şerefkendi in establishing the Kurdish Institute of Paris. A recipient of the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize and of Golden Orange honours, Güney died of stomach cancer in Paris on 9 September 1984, aged forty-seven.