Biography

Pelin Esmer studied sociology at Boğaziçi University before continuing her education at Yavuz Özkan’s Z1 Film Workshop. She worked as an assistant director on documentary and fiction films before founding her own film company, Sinefilm. She began making independent films in 2001, directing The Collector, The Play, 10 to 11, Watchtower, Something Useful, Queen Lear, and And The Rest Will Follow.

Her first film, The Collector (2001), followed her uncle Mithat Esmer through the streets of Istanbul, exploring his passion for collecting. The documentary won the Best Documentary Film award at the Independent Rome Film Festival.

She then learned about the theater adventures of peasant women in Mersin-Arslanköy through a newspaper article. With a small crew, she traveled to the village and filmed these women as they transformed their life stories into a theater play. The documentary film titled The Play (2005) premiered at the Istanbul Film Festival and made its international premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival. The film was screened at more than fifty international film festivals and won the Best Documentary Film award at the Creteil, Bucharest, and Trieste Film Festivals. Pelin Esmer was awarded the Best New Documentary Filmmaker award at the Tribeca Film Festival for her first feature film.

The Play was followed by her first fiction film, 10 to 11 (2009). She completed the screenplay for her film, inspired by her documentary The Collector, at the Cinefondation artist residency of the Cannes Film Festival, where she was invited. Starring Mithat Esmer and Nejat İşler, 10 to 11 made its international premiere in the official selection of the San Sebastian Film Festival. It toured many festivals, including Toronto, Rotterdam, Tallinn, and received numerous national and international awards including special jury prize at Istanbul Film Festival, best film and best script awards at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, FIBRESCI award at Tromso Film Festival. Esmer received the Best Director award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival for this film from one of her favorite directors Abbas Kiarostami.

Another fictional film she wrote and directed, Watchtower (2012), tells the story of Nihat (Olgun Şimşek), who takes refuge in a fire watchtower at the top of a forest, and Seher (Nilay Erdönmez), who takes shelter in a small bus station on the side of a highway in Tosya. The film made its international premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. It was subsequently screened at festivals in many countries, including Rotterdam, Gothenburg, and Taipei, received numerous international & national awards. Following the release of the film in US, Esmer was invited as a guest of the Caravanserai Program where she attended special screenings in Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska, Kansas City and Washington State.

The Watchtower was followed by Something Useful (2017), which she co-wrote with the writer Barış Bıçakçı. The film, which brings together a poet (Başak Köklükaya), a nurse (Öykü Karayel), and a bedridden engineer (Yiğit Özşener) who have never met before, was largely shot on a train and in Izmir. Something Useful was invited to numerous international festivals. It won the Best Screenplay awards at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, FIPRESCI award and the Best Screenplay award at the Istanbul Film Festival among many other international and national awards.

Pelin Esmer, fourteen years after her first feature film, The Play, shot the documentary Queen Lear (2019) with the same women of Arslanköy again. In Queen Lear, a road movie, she follows the female protagonists as they leave their village and go on tour to remote corners of Mersin and Anamur. She completed the editing of the film in Berlin, where she was invited by the DAAD Artist-in-Residence Program. After its premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival, Queen Lear was screened at numerous international film festivals, including Doc. Fest Munich, FIPADOC, and Gothenburg, and won awards at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival(Turkey), Guangzhou (China), Tetouan (Morocco), and Le FIFA (Canada).

Invited by the Camargo Foundation to an artist residency in Cassis, France, in the fall of 2019, Pelin Esmer began working on her screenplay And The Rest Will Follow. Completed in 2025, the film had its premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival. It was awarded the Best Screenplay prize in the international competition section of the Istanbul Film Festival. While And The Rest Will Follow continues its festival journey, Pelin Esmer is continuing her work on her new screenplay.