Miraz Bezar

Miraz Bezar — Biography

Shot in Kurdish, Min Dît (Ben Gördüm; internationally Before Your Eyes) is the first feature and best-known work of Miraz Bezar, a German citizen of Kurdish origin who works as a director and screenwriter. His work began with short films and reached the festival circuit through this feature; he has also worked in the theatre.

He was born in Ankara in 1971 to a family from Ağrı and emigrated with them to Germany in 1980. He graduated from the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie in Berlin. His early short films were İğne (1994), Berivan (1995), Tele Vérité (1996), Duri (1997) and Freiwild (2000). In 2005 he settled in Diyarbakır, determined to film a story that had hardly been told there. Co-written with Evrim Alataş, Min Dît follows two children whose parents were killed by Jitem and, through them, the unsolved murders of the period; it opened in Turkey on 2 April 2010.

In 2009 the film won the Behlül Dal Special Jury Prize at the Antalya Golden Orange, a special jury prize in Ghent, the Young Talent Award in Hamburg and the Youth Jury Prize at San Sebastián; in 2010 it brought Bezar the Best Director award at the Istanbul Film Festival. He later adapted Das Märchen vom letzten Gedanken and §301 – Die beleidigte Nation for the stage, and in 2015 made the short Nicht zu früh, nicht zu spät.