Yilmaz Guney

Yılmaz Güney was a Kurdish film director, screenwriter, novelist, and actor. He quickly rose to prominence in the Turkish film industry. Many of his works were devoted to the plight of ordinary working-class people in Turkey and the Kurdish culture, people and language. He won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982 for the film Yol (The Road) which he co-produced with Şerif Gören. He was at constant odds with the Turkish government and faced many legal troubles, imprisonments, and censorship for his political views and artistic expression. He was convicted of killing a judge in 1974, a charge which he denied, and escaped from prison in 1981. He fled to France and was later stripped of his Turkish citizenship. He died of stomach cancer in 1984 in Paris. He is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and important figures in Turkish and Kurdish cinema history.