Ayşe Polat, Kurdish filmmaker
Ayşe Polat (1970- ) is an internationally acclaimed German-Kurdish film director, screenwriter, and film producer. Given her Kurdish heritage, her films often deal with themes of identity and belonging.
She was born on November 19, 1970, in Malatya, Bakur (Turkish Kurdistan). In 1978 her family moved to Hamburg, where her father worked in a mail-order company. As a teenager she attempted her first films using video and Super 8.
From 1991 to 1993 she studied German language and literature, philosophy and cultural studies in Berlin and Bremen. She did not attend film school. During those same years she made her first short films, three of them, about the lives of migrants in Germany. Their success launched her career as a film director.
Fremdennacht (Stranger Night) (1992) portrays the suicide of an asylum seeker. The film was supported by the Hamburg Film Bureau.
Ein Fest für Beyhau (A Celebration for Beyhau) (1994) won several awards, including the WDR sponsorship prize.
Gräfin Sophia Hatun (Countess Sophia Hatun) (1997) toured several international festivals and received the special jury prize at the Ankara International Film Festival.
Feature Films and More
Auslandstournee (Tour Abroad) (1999) was Polat’s debut feature film. Senay (Özlem Blume) is a willful eleven-year-old girl in Hamburg whose Turkish father has just died. The only friend responding to her distress is a gay Turkish cabaret singer, Zeki (Hilmi Sözer). Together they travel through Europe in search of the orphan girl’s mother, Çiçek (Özay Fecht), who left at childbirth. The film toured numerous international festivals and won the award for best directorial debut at the Ankara International Film Festival.
En Garde (2004) is about the friendship of two teenage girls in a foster home. Alice, age 16, is an introvert whose her mother sends her to a Catholic girls’ boarding school. Among a group of self-confident teenagers, Alice remains an outsider. Only Berivan, a Kurdish refugee and asylum seeker, befriends her. They become close, but Berivan’s relationship to a childhood friend of Alice threatens the girls’ friendship. The film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and was awarded the Silver Leopard for Best Film. Two performers, Maria Kwiatkowsky and Pinar Erincin, won Best Actress. In 2005, the film received the German Critics Award.
In 2006, taking a break from film, Polat directed her first theatrical work, Otobüs, at Berlin’s Theater Hebbel am Ufer (HAU 2). The play deals with the kidnapping of a group of German package tourists in Turkey.
Luks Glück (2010), a tragicomedy, tells the story of a Turkish family between Hamburg and Istanbul, whose lives are thrown off course when they win the lottery jackpot. The film premiered at the Hof Film Festival, where it received the Förderpreis Deutscher Film.
Die Erbin (The Heiress) (2013) concerns a young woman who travers to her parents’ home village to write a novel about her deceased father; in the process, she must face dark sides of her own family history. The film premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival; it did not receive a regular theatrical release.
The Others (2016), Polat’s first documentary, traces the Armenian genocide in 1915. It had its international premiere at DOK Leipzig festival, where it was awarded the prize of the United Services Union ver.di.
In 2018–19 Polat directed two episodes of the ZDF crime series Der Staatsanwalt.
In 2019 at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival, she was represented at a retrospective on women filmmakers from 1968 to 1999.
In 2020 Polat directed the Dortmund Tatort episode Masken, which aired at the end of 2021 and received a mixed critical reception.
Im toten Winkel (In the Blind Spot) (2023) tells the story, from several perspectives, of a German documentary filmmaker who is confronted with the situation of the Kurds living in northeastern Turkey. The film is premiered at the Berlinale 2023.
