Züli Aladağ

Züli Aladağ — Biography

Born in Van on 2 January 1968, Züli Aladağ is a German film director, producer and screenwriter of Kurdish and Turkish descent who emigrated with his family to Germany in 1973 and grew up in Stuttgart; after briefly studying theatre studies, he entered the industry with a six-month internship on Roland Emmerich's Moon 44 and worked as a production assistant, recording manager and director's assistant on shorts, commercials, plays and documentaries.

Working as a producer from 1993 and as an independent filmmaker from 1995, he made his feature debut, Der Ausbruch, in 1999, the same year he graduated from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. His 2006 drama Rage (Wut) won him the Grimme Award, a GLAAD Media Award and the Golden Camera, and in 2010 he won the German Film Award for producing Die Fremde (When We Leave), starring Sibel Kekilli.

The founder of the Young European Cinema initiative, Aladağ was married from 2002 to 2012 to Austrian actress and producer Feo Aladağ, with whom he founded his own production company in 2006, and he has lived in Berlin since 2002. He has directed several episodes of the long-running series Tatort, staged his own play Neden? (Why?) in Berlin in 2012, and directed the 2016 film Die Opfer - Vergesst mich nicht, about the victims of the NSU murders, as well as 300 Worte Deutsch in 2013.