When I was a kid, painting, acting in theater, playing a bunch of musical instruments, and writing nurtured my curiosity towards different ways of expressing my ideas and emotions. Now, I tell the stories that change my life and make films as emotionally charged healing art.

 

My Turkish-American international production, My Nature is recognized by the Boston Globe and is a Finalist at the Boston Turkish Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts. Additionally, I won the Best Director award from the Swedish International Film Festival with Shut Your Eyes I'm Gonna Dance. It is also listed as a semi-finalist at the Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival, which is Academy Award, BAFTA, and Canadian Screen Awards-qualifying.

 

Media is a powerful medium that can impact societies with positive or negative outputs. I believe that in order to tell truly authentic stories, inclusion must start during the development phase and continue until the end of the distribution phase. I insist this is the way to make art that can accurately represent cultures and identities, and offer positive contributions to societies. 

 

Teaching is as important as producing media for me. I teach screenwriting, directing, creative business enterprises, aesthetic sensibility development, and BFA capstone project courses and topics at Emerson College. Previously, I taught the Writing for the Screen course at RISD and creative writing workshops at GrubStreet, the nation's largest creative writing center.

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As an editorial board member of New Explorations, a peer-reviewed journal at the University of Toronto, I contribute to scholarly discourse transcending new media and technology. Additionally, I have served as an artist/filmmaker member of the Civic Design Initiative at MIT, participating in the work of an interdisciplinary research group exploring climate change and climate immigration.

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Questions about humanity, identity, and existence shape the themes I explore in my films. I double-majored in Sociology and Film and Media Studies with a minor in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. I received my MFA in Film and Media Art from Emerson College in 2017.