Erden Kıral

Erden Kıral — Biography

Erden Kıral was born on 10 April 1942 in Gölcük, the son of a sailor father and a mother of Georgian descent. He graduated from the Ceramics Department of the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts and entered cinema as a critic and publisher. He directed his first feature, The Canal (1978), adapted from Yaşar Kemal's novel Teneke; On Fertile Lands (1979), adapted from Orhan Kemal, was selected for the Moscow International Film Festival and won him the Golden Orange Award for Best Director.

In 1983 A Season in Hakkari won the Silver Bear – Special Jury Prize in Berlin; Hunting Time (1988) was also screened there. Settling in Berlin around the same years, he later won another Golden Orange and a Golden Boll Best Director award for the TRT production The Blue Exile (1993), and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Golden Boll (2007) and Antalya (2015) film festivals. He was married to writer Tezer Özlü (1968-1981), with whom he had a daughter. Spending his final years in Istanbul, Kıral died in Kumluca on 17 July 2022 of a brain hemorrhage.