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Yılmaz Güney
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Yılmaz Güney

Actor · died at 47

Biography

Profile

Age at death47
Birth dateApril 1, 1937
BirthplaceYenice, Adana
DiedSeptember 9, 1984
ProfessionActor, Film director, Screenwriter, Film editor
Zodiac signAries
Real nameYılmaz Pütün
EducationAnkara University Faculty of Law (did not finish); Istanbul University Faculty of Economics
SpouseFatoş Güney
Former spouseNebahat Çehre
Place of deathParis, France

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Yılmaz Güney — Biography

Yılmaz Güney, born Yılmaz Pütün in Yenice, Adana, on April 1, 1937, spent his working life as a Turkish actor, director, screenwriter, producer, editor, writer and poet, and as one of the most influential figures in his country's cinema, until his death in Paris on September 9, 1984. Described in the sources as being of Kurdish and Zaza descent, he shot his films in Turkish and, from a left-wing standpoint, devoted much of his work to the hardships of working people and to portraying Kurdish society, its culture and its language.

He abandoned the law degree he had started at Ankara University and went on to study economics in Istanbul. His screen career began in 1959 with acting roles. In 1961 he was jailed on the accusation that a story he had written at nineteen constituted communist propaganda; Turkish accounts give his punishment as eighteen months in prison followed by six months of internal exile. Once free, he rose to become one of Yeşilçam's most bankable stars and came to be identified with the nickname drawn from the Çirkin Kral pictures he headlined.

He took up directing in 1966 with At Avrat Silah; Hudutların Kanunu, for which he wrote the screenplay and played the lead, established his reputation, and in 1968 he set up his own production company. In 1967 he married the actress Nebahat Çehre. Two years later he married Fatoş Güney.

Although he began with adventure and action fare, from the late 1960s Güney shifted toward socially and politically engaged storytelling. His first significant achievement in this direction was Umut (1970), which he directed, followed by Ağıt, Baba, Arkadaş and Endişe. In 1972 he received a prison sentence for assisting militants of the People's Liberation Party-Front of Turkey, but regained his freedom through the general amnesty of 1974.

Later that year, in Adana for the filming of Endişe, he was accused of responsibility for the death of the judge Sefa Mutlu. Some accounts ascribe the killing to him outright; one notes that he rejected the accusation, while another says the death came after a brawl. The punishment is reported inconsistently as well: nineteen years in the Turkish and German texts, twenty-four years later reduced to eighteen in the Greek one. He kept writing behind bars; Sürü (1979), from his screenplay, took the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 1979, and Düşman (1980) also dates from this period.

Following the coup of September 12, 1980, he left Isparta semi-open prison on furlough in 1981 and never returned, escaping abroad and settling in France. Yol, for which he wrote the script and handled the production and editing while his assistant Şerif Gören directed the shooting, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival; the prize was shared. Duvar (1983), shot in France, became his final film. In 1983 he was stripped of his Turkish citizenship; that same year he joined the Kurdish poets Cigerxwîn and Abdurrahman Şerefkendi in establishing the Kurdish Institute of Paris. A recipient of the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize and of Golden Orange honors, Güney died of stomach cancer in Paris on September 9, 1984, aged forty-seven.

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Yılmaz Güney

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Their work through different eyes

AI-assisted editorial takes on this person's screen work, written from different viewer perspectives. They are not reader comments; those are below.

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

The turning point in Yılmaz Güney's screen work runs from Hudutların Kanunu, directed by Ömer Lütfi Akad, to Umut, which he directed himself. In the first he plays Hıdır, a border villager, in a script he wrote but under another director's camera; in Umut he builds Cabbar, a cab driver with a horse-drawn carriage, under his own direction. His importance lies in showing, within one filmography, the move from popular leading man to the face of realist cinema.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

The characters Yılmaz Güney is best known for are men pinned against a threshold. Hıdır the smuggler in Hudutların Kanunu is caught between the army and the landowners; Cabbar in Umut loses his horse and falls into debt. In Sürü he wrote the story of a villager forced by a blood feud to sell his flock, and produced the film. These films together draw one portrait: the poor provincial man helpless before the order around him.

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