Ömer Kavur

Ömer Kavur — Biography

Ömer Celâl Kavur was born on 18 June 1944 in Ankara to an upper-middle-class family; he finished primary school in Istanbul's Kızıltoprak, attended Robert College for secondary school and Kabataş Boys' High School, then went to Paris for university. There he combined film training with journalism and film-history studies at the Sorbonne, assisted director Alain Robbe-Grillet, and worked on short films for French television. Back in Turkey he made a documentary about the Bosphorus Bridge before directing his first feature, an adaptation of Refik Halit Karay's Yatık Emine, in 1974; censorship trouble around that debut kept him from a second film for five years. In 1980 he co-founded the production company Ada with Atıf Yılmaz and Yavuz Özkan, and later founded Alfa Film, which turned toward international co-productions. Through films such as Yusuf ile Kenan, Ah Güzel İstanbul, Anayurt Oteli, Gece Yolculuğu and Gizli Yüz he built a distinctive cinema centered on themes of journeys and inward searching; Gece Yolculuğu screened at Cannes in 1988 and Akrebin Yolculuğu in 1997. He married and later divorced singer Hümeyra. He died of lymphoma at his home in Teşvikiye in 2005.