Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Deniz Gamze Ergüven — Biography

French-Turkish director and screenwriter Deniz Gamze Ergüven made her name with her first feature, Mustang. The film, about five orphaned sisters, turned her into an international name almost overnight, and she has since worked in Hollywood and American television. She has also occasionally acted.

Born in Ankara, she moved to France in the 1980s, grew up and went to school there, and graduated from La Fémis in 2008. In 2011 she was invited to the Cannes Atelier with a project called The Kings; unable to finance it, she turned to a more intimate story at the suggestion of fellow director Alice Winocour, whom she met there, and the two began work on the script of Mustang. The film screened in the 2015 Cannes Directors' Fortnight and won the Europa Cinemas Label; it was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 88th Academy Awards as France's submission, earned a Golden Globe nomination, won the César for Best First Feature and for Best Original Screenplay, and took the European Film Award for European Discovery of the Year.

After that success she made Kings, set during the 1992 Los Angeles riots and starring Halle Berry and Daniel Craig, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. In television she directed episodes of The First, Perry Mason and The Handmaid's Tale, the latter becoming the highest-rated episode of the series on IMDb. She has been a member of the directors' branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 2016.