Hakkı Kurtuluş

Hakkı Kurtuluş — Biography

Hakkı Kurtuluş is a director who both makes and studies cinema: alongside fiction films he has made shorts that question film history, and he does research in cultural history. Melik Saraçoğlu is his partner in most of his work. His most awarded film is Gözümün Nûru from 2013.

After studying communication and cinema at Galatasaray University he took a film degree at Lyon Lumière University, spent time in Tübingen as an Erasmus student and studied Bergman's cinema at Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle under Jacques Aumont. His first film, Orada (2009), told of a reckoning within an Istanbul family, was shown at twenty-six festivals on four continents and won the "Promising New Director" award at the Ankara Film Festival. It was followed by Bergmanya'ya Yolculuk (2011).

Gözümün Nûru turned Saraçoğlu's real-life experiences into a tragicomic autofiction, with Kurtuluş appearing on camera as well. It won best film and best screenplay at the Adana Golden Boll, the Special Jury Prize in Moscow and the NETPAC jury's best film award. He then made shorts about cinema; Müjdeler Var Yurdumun Toprağına Taşına, Erdi Sinemam Yüz Şeref Yaşına!, a historical inquiry into Ayastefanos'taki Rus Abidesinin Yıkılışı, regarded as the founding film of Turkish cinema, won the best short film prize from SİYAD. In 2018 he made Dermansız Adam and Birlikte Öleceğiz, and he published the long short story Vatandaş Bērziņš.