Özgür Yıldırım

Özgür Yıldırım — Biography

Having grown up in Hamburg, German-Turkish film director, screenwriter and producer Özgür Yıldırım stands among the filmmakers of Germany's migrant-background generation. His first feature, Chiko, drew attention at the Berlinale and the German Film Awards, and he has also directed two episodes of the popular German crime series Tatort.

His family came to Germany as Turkish guest workers. He began writing stories at eleven and at fourteen published his first book, the horror novel Graue Nächte. After secondary school he studied at the Hamburg Media School. The short films he made between 2002 and 2004, above all Alim Market (2004), led Fatih Akın to call him the most talented young German director.

He shot Chiko in 2007 and wrote its screenplay himself, winning a screenplay prize at the Lübeck Nordic Film Days in 2008. The film premiered at the 2008 Berlinale, was nominated in four categories at the German Film Awards a year later, including best feature, and Yıldırım again won for his screenplay. In 2011 he made Blutzbrüdaz with the rapper Sido in the lead; it drew more than 128,000 viewers on its opening weekend and about 529,000 overall. He then moved into television with Tatort: Feuerteufel (2013), which reached about 10 million viewers, and Tatort: Zorn Gottes (2016). He also directed Boy 7 (2015), adapted from a young-adult novel, and Only God Can Judge Me (2017), and worked on the series 4 Blocks.