Tomris Giritlioğlu

Tomris Giritlioğlu — Biography

Born Tomris Arcak in 1957 in the Kadınhanı district of Konya, she spent her childhood in Adana with a family of Hatay origin. After attending TED Ankara College, she graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University, where she was known as an active revolutionary and decided to become a film director. At TRT she worked first as a translator, then as an assistant producer in children's and educational-cultural programming, moved into directing through documentaries, and transferred to the broadcaster's drama department in 1988.

Her 1991 feature debut, about the Greek-Turkish population exchange, won best-director and best-film honours at several festivals; it became the first part of a trilogy completed by her 1999 film about the Wealth Tax and the Aşkale exile of the 1940s and its 2008 sequel. After retiring from TRT in 2002 she began producing for private broadcasters, and as producer or project designer on series including Kurşun Yarası, Çemberimde Gül Oya, Hatırla Sevgili and Asi, she became one of the pioneers of the modern-history period drama on Turkish television.

Giritlioğlu, who had been undergoing cancer treatment, died in Istanbul on 23 September 2024 at the age of 67 and was buried in Antakya.