Feride Çiçekoğlu

Feride Çiçekoğlu — Biography

Feride Çiçekoğlu has moved from architecture to writing, screenwriting and academia, and is known in both Turkish literary and film circles. She is best known for the novel Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar (Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite), drawn from her time in prison, and for co-writing the screenplay of Umuda Yolculuk (Journey of Hope) with Xavier Koller. She has taught at Istanbul Bilgi University since 1999 and writes on the city, women and cinema.

She studied architecture at Middle East Technical University and completed a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania on a Fulbright scholarship; her thesis criticised the planning of Philadelphia. After the military coup of 12 September 1980 she was detained for her political views and spent four years in prison. On her release she worked as an editor at Kalem Yayınları and published translations; her first book was a collection on jazz. Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar, written through the voice of a child she had met in prison, was filmed under the same title in 1989.

She then concentrated on screenplays: Suyun Öte Yanı, Baharın Bittiği Yer, Umuda Yolculuk, Melekler Evi and Parmaklıklar Ardında belong to this period. Umuda Yolculuk won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990. Her story collection Sizin Hiç Babanız Öldü mü? won the literature award of the Lebon Cultural Centre; Vesikalı Şehir, Şehrin İtirazı and İsyankar Şehir are her studies of cinema, and Milföy ve Arkadaşları (2024) is a novel written three decades later. In 2025 she was honoured with the Golden Orange Labour Award.