Yılmaz Güney

Yılmaz Güney (1937–1984) — Kurdish-Turkish actor, director and writer, one of the great world directors of the twentieth century. Born Yılmaz Pütün in the village of Yenice near Adana to a poor Kurdish family, he worked in cotton fields as a child. He moved to Istanbul, began his career in Turkish cinema as a screenwriter, then became the leading man of dozens of films, earning the nickname 'the Ugly King'. Güney was not content with stardom. He turned to directing and made masterpieces such as Umut ('Hope', 1970) and Sürü ('The Herd', 1978), depicting the lives of Anatolian peasants and Kurds. His leftist Kurdish-nationalist convictions made him a constant target of the Turkish state; he was imprisoned several times on political charges. In 1974 he was sentenced to nineteen years for the killing of a judge in a brawl — a charge many regard as fabricated. From prison he wrote the script of his masterpiece Yol ('The Road', 1982), which was directed in his place by his assistant Şerif Gören according to instructions smuggled out of his cell. Yol won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, shared with Costa-Gavras's Missing. He filmed the Turkish-Kurdish fate with cruelty and love. He escaped prison in 1981 and took refuge in France, where he completed the editing of Yol and made his final film, Duvar ('The Wall', 1983) — a story of a children's prison in Turkey. Güney died in Paris in 1984 of stomach cancer at the age of 47, and was buried at Père Lachaise. The French press wrote at the time: 'The master of world cinema is dead'. Kurds consider him the icon of modern Kurdish cinema, and he is taught in every film school in the world. Today halls in Kurdistan and Europe bear his name, and his film Yol is shown at refugee and exile festivals across the world.