Ceylan Özgün Özçelik

Born in 1980, in Turkey. Özçelik studied law at the Marmara University in Istanbul, but never practiced. After working as a text writer in TV channels and as a DJ in a radio station, started to produce, write and host a TV show on cinema called “En Heyecanlı Yeri”, which was aired for almost ten years. Add to that she produced and wrote four other culture-art TV programmes. For fourteen years, she had written film reviews for online and print media. A book of interviews and media memoirs called "Dikkat Çekim Var!” written by her, published in 2013. In between 2005-2011, she edited behind the scenes, cinema award videos, production company trailers and documentaries. Her short films have screened at various festivals including Bratislava Art and Festroia. Her feature film debut KAYGI/INFLAME, a thriller about memory and mass media, has made its world premiere at the 67. Berlinale Panorama and won Luna Gamechanger Award at South by Southwest (SXSW) where the film had its North American premiere. Inflame has screened more than 30 other festivals worldwide. Özçelik is currently developing her second feature 18+, which is a dark comedy about women and violence for quite some time now. 18+ was among the projects of Meetings On The Bridge and won the Visual Effects Award in 2017. Özçelik is an artist-in-residence for 2018 at Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

Works

In Ten Seconds

The struggle of a mother and guidance counselor who will do anything to get her child back to school, expelled from William College, one of the best and most prestigious schools in the country, for a crime she committed.

Release Date:2024-12-20

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Strange, Abandoned, Deranged

Turkey's first “eco” hotel, Naturland Eco Park and Resort, opened in 1991 and operated until 2014. A hybrid of documentary, black satirical comedy and circus-style performance, the film builds on fictional voice-overs that depict the experiences of hotel guests and staff and the gradual decay of the once-pompous and now dilapidated abandoned complex, which was closed due to overwhelming debts and left virtually untouched.

Release Date:2024-10-26

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Dream Workers

Dream Workers is an intimate and daring journey into women's creativity, dreams, and unexpected confrontations by life through the intertwined stories of eight women filmmakers and a village women's theatre group from Turkey. The conditions of urban and cultural gentrification, pandemic, and isolation that initially threaten the film become part of the film. Listening to the creation stories of these women directors, including the director of the documentary, the audience experiences their different ways of living life and making art under the contemporary socio-cultural dynamics of Turkey.

Release Date:2022-06-25

Character:Herself

Witch Trilogy 15+

Witch Trilogy 15+ tells the story of two women who killed their husbands who were violent to them. Aylin and Eve share their home, love, anger, childhood, children, dreams and nightmares. The documentary travels through genres from thriller to experimental as it conveys the emotions that Aylin and Eve have decanted into the letters. He questions the finding of two women “guilty” in the time-and-space-free cycle of violence.

Release Date:2022-04-15

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:1

The Agency

Dicle finds herself in an agency when she comes to Istanbul dreaming of becoming a filmmaker. There’s only place for stars, ego wars, greed, fame, money, hope and disappointment here. As Dicle struggles to exist in this glamorous world without losing her way... Her broken family ties start to bleed again. Her father who abandoned them before she was born is now one of the sharks of the industry and they are working in the same agency. And the magical lights of cinema start to shed light on Dicle’s first love.

Release Date:2020-08-25

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:12

Ankebût

A woman, released from prison, drifts between nightmare and reality.

Release Date:2020-03-28

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:4

Witch Trilogy 13+

A fourteen-year old girl communicates with a spider in a dark basement, without knowing the time and place.

Release Date:2019-10-03

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:3

7 Faces

Featuring seven different yet intertwined stories of modern life in Istanbul, 7 Faces is a thought-provoking drama centering on seven characters living in the same city apartment building. Each of them faces a major change in their lives, which requires them to confront their biggest fear or weakness.

Release Date:2017-09-22

Department:Creator

Job:Creator

Vote Count:8

Inflame

Hasret has been seeing the same nightmare for some time, but she keeps living unaware that what she sees is actually remembering. A 30-year-old woman who works in a News Channel, living alone in the flat left by her musician parents who died in a car crash twenty years ago. Is it? The question creeps into her mind, and then (or maybe even before) her life through recurring nightmares: Is it possible that her parents did not die in a car crash?

Release Date:2017-05-12

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:12

By Any Means Necessary

Release Date:2011-11-23

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Dump of Untitled Pieces

Facing imminent eviction, an idealistic photographer and her hapless roommate attempt to sell her work to galleries for the first time, embarking on a bumpy journey through the collapsing art market of Istanbul.

Character:Nurdan