Yesim Ustaoglu
After making several award –winning shorts in Turkey, Yeşim Ustaoğlu made her feature film debut with 1994’s THE TRACE (iZ). The film was presented at numerous international festivals, including Moscow and Gotenburg. Yeşim Ustaoğlu received international recognition for her 1999 film, JOURNEY TO THE SUN (GÜNEŞE YOLCULUK). In competition at the Berlin Film Festival, JOURNEY TO THE SUN received the Blue Angel Award (Best European Film) and the Peace Prize. The moving story of a courageouas friendship undaunted by political cruelty, JOURNEY TO THE SUN swept the İstanbul Festival by winning Best Film, Best Director, the FIBRESCI Prize and the Audience Award.
WAITING FOR THE CLOUDS, was awarded NHK Sundance– International Film-maker’s award, 2003 and the DAAD scholarship (The foundation of the German Academic Exchange Service), Artist in Berlin Program, to write her new script WAITING FOR THE CLOUDS, the story of a woman forced to live for 50 years with the haunting secrets of a hidden identity. In 2008 she won the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Filmfestival for her feature film PANDORA'S BOX.
Filmography
PANDORA’S BOX (2008)
LIFE ON THEIR SHOULDERS (2004) documentary
WAITING FOR THE CLOUDS (2004)
JOURNEY TO THE SUN (1999)
THE TRACE (1994)
HOTEL (1992) short
DUET (1990) short
MAGNAFANTAGNA (1987) short
TO CATCH A MOMENT (1984) short
Araf - Somewhere In Between (2012)
Pretty Zehra and handsome Olgun spend most of their young lives working in a service station cafeteria near a lonely highway. Their monotonous work shifts are broken up only by sparks of naive expectations of a brighter future. Everything seems transient about their surroundings. The once important industrial area is now a faceless place of economic waste and unemployment. Most of the area's occupants have all escaped to the big city in search of opportunity. But Zehra, Olgun and their friends still remain, caught somewhere in between the past and an uncertain future. More
Pandora's Box - Pandoranin kutusu (2008)
Two sisters and a brother live in the center of İstanbul today. They are in their thirties and forties, and lead very different lives, self centered on their upper-middle class preoccupations. One day, a phone call brings them together on a voyage through Turkey’s suburbs and villages to the small town in the Black Sea mountains where they were born. Their aged mother, Nusret, has dissappered. More
Journey to the Sun - Günese Yolculuk (1999)
A story of friendship, courage and a politically naive man’s transformation into someone painfully aware of the social realities in contemporary Turkey … Mehmet and Berzan, two young men from different regions of Turkey bond together as lower – class citizens in Istanbul. When Mehmet is unjustly arrested, his frightened roomates evict him and he loses his job. Mehmet’s loyalty to Berzan will eventually force him to disregard an uncompassionate bureaucracy and embark on a journey eastward across Turkey. More
