Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Birthday: 4 June 1978, Ankara, Turkey

In 2011 Ergüven was invited to attend the Cannes Film Festivals Atelier to help develop her project, The Kings. While there she met fellow director Alice Winocour who was there to develop her first feature film Augustine. After Ergüven was unable to find financing for her film Winocour suggested she write a more intimate piece leading the two to begin work on the script for Mustang.Her debut film Mustang premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Europa Cinemas Label Award. It later played in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was selected as the French entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards It was later shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.Ergüven was also nominated for multiple César Awards, winning the César Award for Best First Feature Film as well as the César Award for Best Original Screenplay.Ergüven was the first person surprised by the film's overwhelmingly positive welcome. "During Cannes I was telling this joke: Tuesday we'll show the movie, Wednesday we'll talk to the press, Thursday we'll be old news. But that Thursday never came! We're still Wednesday and it's just getting more intense.", she says. Show less «

The one good thing is that Turkey was a democracy - yes, you can say it in the past tense now. It re...Show more »

The one good thing is that Turkey was a democracy - yes, you can say it in the past tense now. It remains [as a result] extremely vigorous. The population is youthful, and literally simmering. Its cross-currents are moving deeply. You can feel that it will go in one direction, or another. The current government doesn't tolerate any kind of criticism, not even the smallest joke. People come and go, and he [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] will go eventually, too. But the problem is what he's doing to the fabric of the country. He's polarising, making people hate each other. We were always a heterogeneous country, but we lived together in peace. Now he's attacking that. [May 2016] Show less «

[if it is harder to get a movie made as a woman] I never feel like complaining about it but, yes, I ...Show more »

[if it is harder to get a movie made as a woman] I never feel like complaining about it but, yes, I think it is. There is something animal in the way we evaluate people. And I have a soft voice, and I wear clothes with flowers on, and heels, and I come across as fragile, even if that is not the case at all. If I had the body and the voice of an alpha male, it would be easier. It took nine years from leaving film school until Mustang (2016) was screened at Cannes, and those years were demoralising. It's difficult not to be affected. You work for the minimum, to have your roof and four walls, so you can write. It's not super fun. [2016] Show less «

Film is my tool. It's how I switch people's minds on to something. It's how I participate. [2016]

The way he [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] speaks: he makes them [women] fragile with his messages, whether s...Show more »

The way he [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] speaks: he makes them [women] fragile with his messages, whether subliminal or explicit. There is a certain way, he says, of being a woman: you have to be a mother and at home, and that's all. When you see a man, you should blush and look down. It's like something from the middle ages. The subtext is that women are only seen as sexual. That's why they must cover every inch of their skin. This is dangerous because it generates more violence against them, it makes it OK for men to act like assailants. Rapes happen everywhere, but in Turkey women come out on to the streets to protest because such attacks only seem to echo what the government is saying. [May 2016] Show less «

[on why she left Turkey] I'd had some very aggressive, negative critiques there [in Turkey], the kin...Show more »

[on why she left Turkey] I'd had some very aggressive, negative critiques there [in Turkey], the kind of thing I hadn't received anywhere else. (...) I detested the response [to Mustang (2016)] in Turkey, and so I withdrew from it. [2016] Show less «

Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Deniz Gamze Ergüven's FILMOGRAPHY

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