Özcan Alper

Özcan Alper — Biography

Özcan Alper is a director and screenwriter whose films follow people living in the shadow of Turkey's recent political history. His first feature, Sonbahar, won numerous awards at home and abroad. In recent years he reached audiences with Erken Kış (2025), and he is now behind the camera on Yarım Kalan, about the life of Kazım Koyuncu.

He grew up in a Hemshin family in Hopa, in Artvin province, and Hemshin was the first language he learned. At Istanbul University he studied physics and then the history of science (graduating in 2003); as a student he joined film workshops at the Mesopotamia Cultural Center and the Nâzım Hikmet Cultural Center and assisted on films by several directors, among them Yeşim Ustaoğlu. His first directing effort was the short Momi (2001), the first film shot in Hemshin, followed by documentaries such as Tokai City'de Melankoli ve Rapsodi. Sonbahar (2008) took best film and the special jury prize at the Adana Golden Boll, an award at Locarno and others elsewhere, and was nominated for European Discovery of the Year at the European Film Awards.

His later films returned to the same social memory: Gelecek Uzun Sürer (2011) dealt with the unsolved killings of the 1990s, and Rüzgârın Hatıraları (2015) with 1915 and the years of the Wealth Tax. He won best director at the 2022 Boğaziçi Film Festival for Karanlık Gece, and that year adapted Kemal Varol's novel Âşıklar Bayramı.