
Pelin Esmer
1972 (53 года)A feature documentary, The Play made its international premiere in San Sebastian Film Festival. It has been screened over 50 festivals around the world and received many awards including “The Best New Documentary Filmmaker Award” in Tribeca Film Festival. Her first fiction 10 to 11 was one of the six projects chosen by Cannes Film Festival’s Résidence du Cinéfondation in Paris where she worked on the script. An official selection of San Sebastian Film Festival, 10 to 11 received many awards in various festivals around the world and was released in cinemas in Turkey, France and Germany. Her second fiction Watchtower which premiered in Toronto and Rotterdam Film Festival has been screened in many countries and five different states of USA as part of the Caravanserai Program.
Something Useful received the best screenplay award in Tallinn International Film Festival besides several FIPRESCI awards in Turkey: best director, best screenplay and best actress.
In 2018, Pelin Esmer was invited to Berlin by DAAD Artists-in-Residence Program where she developed her last documetary film Queen Lear. Having premiered in Sarajevo Film Festival, Queen Lear received Yılmaz Güney Award and SİYAD Cüneyt Cebenoyan Award at Adana Golden Boll Film Festival in Turkey while being screened in oversea festivals.
Pelin Esmer was a guest artist in the residence of Camargo Foundation in Cassis-France between september-november 2019, working on her new project.
Oyun
Pelin Esmer
When nine peasant women from a mountain village in southern Turkey decide to write and perform a play based on their life stories, aspects of their personalities emerge that they never knew existed. Esmer's documentary observes the creative stages leading up to the production of the play, and shows us how nine subtly but significantly different women emerge after its staging.
The Play

Something Useful
Pelin Esmer
Öykü Karayel, Ayşenil Şamlıoğlu
Leyla, a lawyer and a poet, takes the long-distance train to attend her high school reunion dinner. On the train, she meets Canan, a young nursing student in distress. As the conversation develops, Leyla learns that Canan is travelling to assist with the suicide of a paralysed man, Yavuz, who wants to die. At the end of the long over- night trip, surrounded by the stories of people both on and off the train, Leyla decides to accompany Canan on her difficult visit.
Something Useful

Kraliçe Lear
Pelin Esmer
Behiye Yanık, Cennet Güneş
Shakespeare's 'King Lear' travelling on the dusty and risky roads to the remotest forgotten villages in the mountains of Turkey where even drinking water can hardly reach, turns delicately into 'Queen Lear' in the hands of a peasant-women theatre group. In the early 2000s, a handful of peasant women from the mountains of southern Turkey formed a theater group, which later became the subject of the documentary, The Play. The women acted out their own life stories in the village, and the play changed their lives. Now, they take to the road with an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear, traveling the dusty, dangerous roads to the farthest-flung mountain villages where there isn't even running water. On the road, their lives merge with the world of King Lear and become bound up with "the good and the bad", "the young and the old", "the rich and the poor", "the honest and the dishonest" of the play.
Queen Lear

11'e 10 Kala
Pelin Esmer
Nejat İşler, Mithat Esmer
Mithat passionately collects newspapers in his Istanbul flat. The other tenants ridicule him and he lives a lonely life. As the building is to be renovated, Mithat develops a friendship with concierge Ali, another loner, who helps him save his collection. They involuntarily change each other’s fate.
10 to 11

Koleksiyoncu
Pelin Esmer
Mithat Esmer
This is a documentary about a passionate collector. A man who has been collecting for 70 years, collecting everything one can imagine. A man who lives in his own house like a guest of his collections. A man who tries to freeze time, as if to hold on to present. In this documentary, you will follow this passionate collector through the vivid streets of Istanbul, among the crowd, in search of new collection items while trying to understand his perception of life and collection.
The Collector

Sen Ben Lenin
Tufan Tastan
Barış Falay, Saygın Soysal
One day waves bring a wooden statue of Lenin to a small town by the Black Sea. The statue is erected in the town square by the Municipality with the hope that it would attract tourists to the town. As an official opening ceremony is planned with the participation of the Prime Minister and a Russian delegation, the statue gets stolen. Two police investigators from Ankara are assigned to find Lenin in twelve hours. Townspeople give an unexpected answer to the question «Where is Lenin?».
You Me Lenin
