Yilmaz Özdil

Filmmaker, Turkey

Yılmaz Özdil is a Kurdish film director and researcher born in Hakkari (1979), in eastern Turkey. He did his master’s degree at the Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University on the geopolitical border treatment in Kurdish cinema. In 2013 he defended his PhD dissertation entitled “The Visual Construction of Kurdish Identities in Cinema” at the University Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle. From 2003 to 2014, he directed several documentary films and also worked as assistant director in several films shot in Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan and France, notably with Yılmaz Erdoğan, Hiner Saleem and Claude Weisz. He is currently working at Mardin Artuklu University as an assistant professor teaching Kurdish cinema and the representation of the Kurds in cinema. His first fiction film Barê Giran was selected at 110 international festivals including the Tampere Film Festival, Encounters Film Festival and Galway Film Fleadh and won 30 awards.