Ayşe Polat

Ayşe Polat — Biography

Born in Malatya to a Kurdish-Alevi working-class family, Ayşe Polat emigrated with them to Hamburg in 1978 and went on to study German literature at the University of Bremen and philosophy and cultural studies in Berlin. Beginning with short films in the early 1990s, she became one of the leading figures of German-Turkish cinema by the end of the decade, exploring themes of the search for and loss of identity in work associated with the Berlin School. After her feature debut Tour Abroad, her second feature En Garde (2004) opened the Locarno Film Festival and won the Silver Leopard and the German Critics' Award. In 2006 she directed a stage play in Berlin, before returning to fiction features with Luks Glück and The Heiress and, in 2016, making her first documentary, The Others. Her work was featured in the 69th Berlinale's retrospective on female filmmakers. In 2023 she wrote and directed the political thriller In the Blind Spot (Kör Noktada), which won multiple prizes including the Golden Tulip at the Istanbul Film Festival and streamed on MUBI.