Burak Çevik

Directing

Burak Çevik

Born

1993-12-26 (32)

Place of birth

Istanbul, Turkey

Known for

Directing

Credits

34 titles

Burak Cevik is the founder of Fol Cinema Society and has curated experimental and arthouse film screenings. Between 2018 and 2020, he was a lecturer on non-fiction at Istanbul Bilgi University. His films The Pillar of Salt (2018), Belonging (2019) and Forms of Forgetting (2023) premiered at the Berlinale Forum. His latest film, Nothing in Its Place (2024), was commissioned by the Jeonju Cinema Project and was selected to compete at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. His video works have been screened at various festivals, including Locarno Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, FID Marseille, and New York Film Festival. - Source: burakcevik.com

Known for

Altın Koza poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Altın Koza

1969

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants poster
NR

At midnight, two lab assistants study an unknown substance using machines and procedures that are unclear to us. They pursue knowledge through the strict logic of the laboratory. As exhaustion settles in, one of the assistants brews Turkish coffee for the other, and the night shifts. The process becomes a fortune-telling, and the scientific gaze gives way to intuition. Moving from analysis to foresight, the two women imagine another method of knowing; a space where rational inquiry and intuitive perception coexist.

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants

2026

Belonging poster
5.8

A murder investigation is flipped inside out in Burak Çevik's second feature, a spellbinding and surprising work that questions whether we can ever truly understand criminal motives. We begin in the present as an unseen narrator recounts the assassination of his lover's disapproving mother, accompanied by hauntingly vacant images of urban alienation and garish city lights; we then flash back to witness the first encounter between the lovers-turned-accomplices, their mutual attraction and world-weariness emerging across a sleepless night and morning after. Çevik imbues the proceedings with a stylistic confidence and willingness to bend the conventions of cinematic form to arrive at a complex, gripping double meditation on love and death.

Belonging

2019

Forms of Forgetting poster
4.5

Nesrin and Erdem talk about their relationship, which they don’t remember in exactly the same way. Çevik’s visually stunning essay uses their conversations to forge a pensive treatise on what it means to forget, where word and image play an equal role.

Forms of Forgetting

2023

Hesitation Wound poster
6.5

A criminal lawyer Canan, divides her time in the courthouse and mother's hospital bed at night. She has to make a moral choice that will affect lives of her mother, judge and murder suspect client.

Hesitation Wound

2024

The List of Those Who Love Me poster
6.2

Yılmaz is the dealer and close friends of famous filmmakers and actors. With the increasing drug operations in Istanbul, Yılmaz is getting paranoid about not being loved by them anymore. This paranoia makes him take bigger risks day by day and he will be destroyed by the desire for being loved.

The List of Those Who Love Me

2022

Film credits

Series credits

Behind the camera

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants poster
NR

At midnight, two lab assistants study an unknown substance using machines and procedures that are unclear to us. They pursue knowledge through the strict logic of the laboratory. As exhaustion settles in, one of the assistants brews Turkish coffee for the other, and the night shifts. The process becomes a fortune-telling, and the scientific gaze gives way to intuition. Moving from analysis to foresight, the two women imagine another method of knowing; a space where rational inquiry and intuitive perception coexist.

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants

2026

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants poster
NR

At midnight, two lab assistants study an unknown substance using machines and procedures that are unclear to us. They pursue knowledge through the strict logic of the laboratory. As exhaustion settles in, one of the assistants brews Turkish coffee for the other, and the night shifts. The process becomes a fortune-telling, and the scientific gaze gives way to intuition. Moving from analysis to foresight, the two women imagine another method of knowing; a space where rational inquiry and intuitive perception coexist.

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants

2026

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants poster
NR

At midnight, two lab assistants study an unknown substance using machines and procedures that are unclear to us. They pursue knowledge through the strict logic of the laboratory. As exhaustion settles in, one of the assistants brews Turkish coffee for the other, and the night shifts. The process becomes a fortune-telling, and the scientific gaze gives way to intuition. Moving from analysis to foresight, the two women imagine another method of knowing; a space where rational inquiry and intuitive perception coexist.

The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants

2026

Belonging poster
5.8

A murder investigation is flipped inside out in Burak Çevik's second feature, a spellbinding and surprising work that questions whether we can ever truly understand criminal motives. We begin in the present as an unseen narrator recounts the assassination of his lover's disapproving mother, accompanied by hauntingly vacant images of urban alienation and garish city lights; we then flash back to witness the first encounter between the lovers-turned-accomplices, their mutual attraction and world-weariness emerging across a sleepless night and morning after. Çevik imbues the proceedings with a stylistic confidence and willingness to bend the conventions of cinematic form to arrive at a complex, gripping double meditation on love and death.

Belonging

2019

Belonging poster
5.8

A murder investigation is flipped inside out in Burak Çevik's second feature, a spellbinding and surprising work that questions whether we can ever truly understand criminal motives. We begin in the present as an unseen narrator recounts the assassination of his lover's disapproving mother, accompanied by hauntingly vacant images of urban alienation and garish city lights; we then flash back to witness the first encounter between the lovers-turned-accomplices, their mutual attraction and world-weariness emerging across a sleepless night and morning after. Çevik imbues the proceedings with a stylistic confidence and willingness to bend the conventions of cinematic form to arrive at a complex, gripping double meditation on love and death.

Belonging

2019

Belonging poster
5.8

A murder investigation is flipped inside out in Burak Çevik's second feature, a spellbinding and surprising work that questions whether we can ever truly understand criminal motives. We begin in the present as an unseen narrator recounts the assassination of his lover's disapproving mother, accompanied by hauntingly vacant images of urban alienation and garish city lights; we then flash back to witness the first encounter between the lovers-turned-accomplices, their mutual attraction and world-weariness emerging across a sleepless night and morning after. Çevik imbues the proceedings with a stylistic confidence and willingness to bend the conventions of cinematic form to arrive at a complex, gripping double meditation on love and death.

Belonging

2019

Forms of Forgetting poster
4.5

Nesrin and Erdem talk about their relationship, which they don’t remember in exactly the same way. Çevik’s visually stunning essay uses their conversations to forge a pensive treatise on what it means to forget, where word and image play an equal role.

Forms of Forgetting

2023

Forms of Forgetting poster
4.5

Nesrin and Erdem talk about their relationship, which they don’t remember in exactly the same way. Çevik’s visually stunning essay uses their conversations to forge a pensive treatise on what it means to forget, where word and image play an equal role.

Forms of Forgetting

2023

Forms of Forgetting poster
4.5

Nesrin and Erdem talk about their relationship, which they don’t remember in exactly the same way. Çevik’s visually stunning essay uses their conversations to forge a pensive treatise on what it means to forget, where word and image play an equal role.

Forms of Forgetting

2023

Hesitation Wound poster
6.5

A criminal lawyer Canan, divides her time in the courthouse and mother's hospital bed at night. She has to make a moral choice that will affect lives of her mother, judge and murder suspect client.

Hesitation Wound

2024

An Incomplete Calendar poster
NR

A forgotten musical record connects Caracas to Tehran, revealing untold stories of oil, not as a commodity, but as a political leverage for the liberation struggles in Palestine and building Pan-Arab solidarity between 1960-1970.

An Incomplete Calendar

2026

Between Two Dawns poster
6.4

After a worker is severely injured in their family business, Kadir is forced into making a moral decision, which will have an impact on his dreams, his family, and the life of injured worker’s wife

Between Two Dawns

2021

While Cursed by Specters poster
7.0

Burak Çevik’s film reworks the stark black-and-white compositions of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s 1984 film Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations) in which German locations stand in for the imagined country of Kafka’s unfinished novel, Amerika. Here, however, depopulated interiors and desolate outdoor spaces carry the phantasmic traces of humanity—voices, shadows, photographs, cars—but never let them appear, suggesting a world in which all connections to the social have come untethered.

While Cursed by Specters

2020

While Cursed by Specters poster
7.0

Burak Çevik’s film reworks the stark black-and-white compositions of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s 1984 film Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations) in which German locations stand in for the imagined country of Kafka’s unfinished novel, Amerika. Here, however, depopulated interiors and desolate outdoor spaces carry the phantasmic traces of humanity—voices, shadows, photographs, cars—but never let them appear, suggesting a world in which all connections to the social have come untethered.

While Cursed by Specters

2020

Nothing in Its Place poster
4.0

In 1978, five leftist youths who believed that the leftist revolution could be realized through politics, not violence, gathered in a house and started to talk about the magazine they had published. The unexpected events that take place later that night reveal the political chaos in Turkey before the 1980 coup d'état.

Nothing in Its Place

2024

Nothing in Its Place poster
4.0

In 1978, five leftist youths who believed that the leftist revolution could be realized through politics, not violence, gathered in a house and started to talk about the magazine they had published. The unexpected events that take place later that night reveal the political chaos in Turkey before the 1980 coup d'état.

Nothing in Its Place

2024

Nothing in Its Place poster
4.0

In 1978, five leftist youths who believed that the leftist revolution could be realized through politics, not violence, gathered in a house and started to talk about the magazine they had published. The unexpected events that take place later that night reveal the political chaos in Turkey before the 1980 coup d'état.

Nothing in Its Place

2024

A Woman Escapes poster
6.0

Audrey lives alone in Paris after moving there to tend to the home of her recently deceased friend, Juliane. Moving through the days without motivation or a sense of purpose, she tries to re-establish her footing in the world by beginning video correspondences with two filmmakers—Burak, who lives in Istanbul, and Blake, who lives in Toronto. This exchange of words and footage initiates a healing process, but the nature of the interaction is not what it seems.

A Woman Escapes

2022

A Woman Escapes poster
6.0

Audrey lives alone in Paris after moving there to tend to the home of her recently deceased friend, Juliane. Moving through the days without motivation or a sense of purpose, she tries to re-establish her footing in the world by beginning video correspondences with two filmmakers—Burak, who lives in Istanbul, and Blake, who lives in Toronto. This exchange of words and footage initiates a healing process, but the nature of the interaction is not what it seems.

A Woman Escapes

2022

As the Spring Arrives, Water Recalls the Nomads poster
NR

A heterogeneous group of shepherds travels through the Çukurova valley in Turkey, following in the footsteps of their nomadic ancestors. Between archives and imaginary correspondence, the film becomes an echo of the memory and disappearance of pastoral ecosystems.

As the Spring Arrives, Water Recalls the Nomads

2026

No artwork available
NR

In the mid-19th century, a Turkish painter and a German photographer set out to capture images of the Ottoman 'homeland'. Lost in the mountains, they search for the purpose that led them there.

That Country

—

The Pillar of Salt poster
5.0

A reclusive woman in her thirties leads a life frozen in time in a cave-like room. In her rare trips to the city, she chats with an oarswoman haunted by the devils. She searches for her twin sister in unfrequented corners of the city. In this journey in which time and space are out of joint, a same dream is recounted time after time.

The Pillar of Salt

2018

The Pillar of Salt poster
5.0

A reclusive woman in her thirties leads a life frozen in time in a cave-like room. In her rare trips to the city, she chats with an oarswoman haunted by the devils. She searches for her twin sister in unfrequented corners of the city. In this journey in which time and space are out of joint, a same dream is recounted time after time.

The Pillar of Salt

2018

The Pillar of Salt poster
5.0

A reclusive woman in her thirties leads a life frozen in time in a cave-like room. In her rare trips to the city, she chats with an oarswoman haunted by the devils. She searches for her twin sister in unfrequented corners of the city. In this journey in which time and space are out of joint, a same dream is recounted time after time.

The Pillar of Salt

2018

Center poster
NR

‘‘There will be 3 copies of this video. The first one is here (MacDowell, Putnam Studio), the second one is with Seda M. and the third one is with me. Please don’t copy it and take it with you because nothing is permanent.’’

Center

2024

Center poster
NR

‘‘There will be 3 copies of this video. The first one is here (MacDowell, Putnam Studio), the second one is with Seda M. and the third one is with me. Please don’t copy it and take it with you because nothing is permanent.’’

Center

2024

A Topography of Memory poster
NR

Video: Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, live action footage shot in Istanbul, Turkey, June 8, 2015. Sound: A family on their way to vote in the Turkish general election of June 7, 2015.

A Topography of Memory

2019

A Topography of Memory poster
NR

Video: Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, live action footage shot in Istanbul, Turkey, June 8, 2015. Sound: A family on their way to vote in the Turkish general election of June 7, 2015.

A Topography of Memory

2019

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

All the Tired Horses

—

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

All the Tired Horses

—

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

All the Tired Horses

—

We Are a Family poster
NR

Haluk, an incompetent factory owner, competes with his wife and skillful operations manager Güler. As the power crisis between the husband and wife escalates, someone unexpected will suffer from it in a most tragic way.

We Are a Family

2020