Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Nuri Bilge Ceylan (born 1959 in Istanbul) is a Turkish film director. After graduating from Bogazici University with a BSc degree on Electrical Engineering, he went on with his studies on cinema for two years. His first short film Koza (Cocoon) was screened in the Cannes Film Festival in 1995. He received many awards with his debut feature Kasaba (Small Town). His third feature Uzak (Distant) received many awards including the Grand Jury Prize and the Best Actor Prize at Cannes, and was praised internationally. He usually deals with the estrangement of the individual, natural existentialism, monotonous real human lives and fundamental details of life. Having started his career as a photographer, Ceylan makes minimalist movies with an extremely low budget. His cast generally consists of amateur actors, most of which are his family members, including his mother and father. Most critiques link the strikingly natural atmosphere in his movies with this selection of actors. More specifically, the characters in Ceylan's movies appear to be people from our everyday life and the audience can form a warm and friendly relationship with the actors, which appears to be a much more difficult task for professional actors. - Wikipedia.org