Yüksel Yavuz

Yüksel Yavuz — Biography

Migration, minorities, identity and the meaning of the homeland run through the films and documentaries of Yüksel Yavuz, a Kurdish-born director and screenwriter based in Germany. Among his features is the 2003 film Kleine Freiheit (Küçük Özgürlük), which he directed and wrote. His work has been shown at many festivals, Cannes among them.

Born in the Karakoçan district of Elazığ, he moved to Germany in 1980 to join his father, who had found work at the port of Hamburg. From 1986 to 1989 he studied economics and sociology in Hamburg, and from 1992 to 1996 visual communication at the Academy of Fine Arts there. Involved with film since 1990, his early phase drew on his own life: the documentary Mein Vater, der Gastarbeiter (1995), made for ZDF, tells of his father's experience as a guest worker and of his mother, who stayed behind in the village. His father appeared in it and in Aprilkinder (1998).

Later his subject widened to the Kurdish diaspora and what the homeland means to refugees and immigrants: Close-Up Kurdistan (2007) includes places of his childhood, Sehnsucht nach Istanbul (2010) looks at the nationalities who have settled in Istanbul, and Hevî (2013) at the human rights of Kurds in Turkey. His films have won several awards, including the Max Ophüls Prize and the Amnesty International human rights award for best film.