Yusuf Ölmez

Directing

Yusuf Ölmez

Place of birth

Samsun, Türkiye

Known for

Directing

Credits

12 titles

Graduated from Boğaziçi University with a major in Management and a minor in Film Studies. After completing his studies in Narrative Filmmaking at Prague Film School, he earned a Master’s degree at Boğaziçi University, focusing on media economics, political economy, and the cinema of Turkey. In 2023, he completed a second Master’s in Visual and Media Anthropology at MU Berlin, where he directed an ethnographic film in Togo. Based in Berlin, he works as a director, producer, and visual anthropologist.

Known for

Venus in the Fog poster
NR

Cansu and Oguz, a couple in their mid-twenties, deeply love each other for many years. Oguz is a strong person who always supports and motivates his partner whereas Cansu’s love is inspiring for everyone around but she is always afraid about becoming distanced from Oguz. However, this fear unexpectedly turns into different feelings when her concerns become real in the most extreme way.

Venus in the Fog

2020

Wild Women of Anatolia poster
NR

A collection of stories from five women across different regions, generations, and beliefs in Türkiye. A four-generation family harvesting nuts in the Black Sea region; Aslı running a historic coffee business in Istanbul; Hira giving birth in the Aegean Sea; Hatice, an Alevi/Kurdish woman on the eastern high plains; and Arya fighting for transgender rights in Ankara. Stories of freedom, desire, and dreams shaped by the landscapes they inhabit.

Wild Women of Anatolia

2024

Distant Close poster
NR

What is the role of an ethnographic filmmaker as an outsider and student of a culture? Is it about representing, demonstrating, and reflecting or exposing, participating, and transposing? Although these are not binary terms of the historic discussions in anthropology, they share a lot to be experimented through shared cine-anthropology and sensory multimodal ethnography.

Distant Close

2024

Deceptive Depths poster
NR

Rifat is in the preparation process of a movie about strangers chatting at bus stops, together with his long-time friend and producer, Serhat. as Rifat gets more lonely and isolated, he reluctantly asks his brother in law for financial help. Rifat, who starts to face people around him even more closely as he does not get the reactions he expected during this process, gets lost in a vicious cycle in which he keeps changing the scenario for his film.

Deceptive Depths

2023

Wall, The Wall poster
NR

Murat is a dedicated construction worker building a gargantuan wall for a boss whom none of the workers has ever seen. After the departure of his colleague, Ali, and his relocation on the other side of the wall imposed by Yavuz, the boss' right-hand, Murat sinks into a whirlwind of tension that leads him to struggle to meet the man he works for.

Wall, The Wall

2024

No artwork available
NR

1930s Anatolia. As an architect struggles to build the first crematorium, she gets entangled in the hunt for a serial killer and a dark web of political blackmail.

The Cremation Society

—

Behind the camera

Venus in the Fog poster
NR

Cansu and Oguz, a couple in their mid-twenties, deeply love each other for many years. Oguz is a strong person who always supports and motivates his partner whereas Cansu’s love is inspiring for everyone around but she is always afraid about becoming distanced from Oguz. However, this fear unexpectedly turns into different feelings when her concerns become real in the most extreme way.

Venus in the Fog

2020

Venus in the Fog poster
NR

Cansu and Oguz, a couple in their mid-twenties, deeply love each other for many years. Oguz is a strong person who always supports and motivates his partner whereas Cansu’s love is inspiring for everyone around but she is always afraid about becoming distanced from Oguz. However, this fear unexpectedly turns into different feelings when her concerns become real in the most extreme way.

Venus in the Fog

2020

Wild Women of Anatolia poster
NR

A collection of stories from five women across different regions, generations, and beliefs in Türkiye. A four-generation family harvesting nuts in the Black Sea region; Aslı running a historic coffee business in Istanbul; Hira giving birth in the Aegean Sea; Hatice, an Alevi/Kurdish woman on the eastern high plains; and Arya fighting for transgender rights in Ankara. Stories of freedom, desire, and dreams shaped by the landscapes they inhabit.

Wild Women of Anatolia

2024

Distant Close poster
NR

What is the role of an ethnographic filmmaker as an outsider and student of a culture? Is it about representing, demonstrating, and reflecting or exposing, participating, and transposing? Although these are not binary terms of the historic discussions in anthropology, they share a lot to be experimented through shared cine-anthropology and sensory multimodal ethnography.

Distant Close

2024

Deceptive Depths poster
NR

Rifat is in the preparation process of a movie about strangers chatting at bus stops, together with his long-time friend and producer, Serhat. as Rifat gets more lonely and isolated, he reluctantly asks his brother in law for financial help. Rifat, who starts to face people around him even more closely as he does not get the reactions he expected during this process, gets lost in a vicious cycle in which he keeps changing the scenario for his film.

Deceptive Depths

2023

Wall, The Wall poster
NR

Murat is a dedicated construction worker building a gargantuan wall for a boss whom none of the workers has ever seen. After the departure of his colleague, Ali, and his relocation on the other side of the wall imposed by Yavuz, the boss' right-hand, Murat sinks into a whirlwind of tension that leads him to struggle to meet the man he works for.

Wall, The Wall

2024

Wall, The Wall poster
NR

Murat is a dedicated construction worker building a gargantuan wall for a boss whom none of the workers has ever seen. After the departure of his colleague, Ali, and his relocation on the other side of the wall imposed by Yavuz, the boss' right-hand, Murat sinks into a whirlwind of tension that leads him to struggle to meet the man he works for.

Wall, The Wall

2024

No artwork available
NR

1930s Anatolia. As an architect struggles to build the first crematorium, she gets entangled in the hunt for a serial killer and a dark web of political blackmail.

The Cremation Society

—

A Glass of Desire poster
NR

A young woman’s husband is mysteriously taken away from her at dawn. She tries to mourn by remembering him through objects and imitation but this leads to a destructive discovery of her desires towards the mysterious entities that took her husband away. She finds herself in a realistic limbo of unexpected desires.

A Glass of Desire

2021

A Glass of Desire poster
NR

A young woman’s husband is mysteriously taken away from her at dawn. She tries to mourn by remembering him through objects and imitation but this leads to a destructive discovery of her desires towards the mysterious entities that took her husband away. She finds herself in a realistic limbo of unexpected desires.

A Glass of Desire

2021

A Glass of Desire poster
NR

A young woman’s husband is mysteriously taken away from her at dawn. She tries to mourn by remembering him through objects and imitation but this leads to a destructive discovery of her desires towards the mysterious entities that took her husband away. She finds herself in a realistic limbo of unexpected desires.

A Glass of Desire

2021

The Breakdown poster
NR

When a dysfunctional family’s car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, their repressed grievances with each other bubble to the surface.

The Breakdown

2022