Ezel Akay

Ezel Akay isn't the kind of filmmaker who followed a straight line to the screen. Born in 1961 in Kastamonu, Turkey, he trained first as a mechanical engineer at Boğaziçi University before pivoting — hard — toward acting, eventually studying the craft at Villanova University in the United States (Wikipedia). That detour through engineering probably explains something about how methodically he's built a career that spans producing, directing, writing, and acting across nearly three decades.

What's striking is how early he planted his flag on the producing side. His first major credit came in 1996, when he backed Derviş Zaim's debut feature Somersault in a Coffin (Tabutta Rövaşata), a film that went on to collect awards at national and international festivals (Wikipedia). Not bad for an opening move. He kept that momentum going as a founding partner of production company IFR, where he's reported to have directed somewhere between 900 and 1,200 commercials — a number that sounds almost impossible until you remember how relentlessly the commercial world churns (Wikipedia). His executive producer credit on Journey to the Sun (1999) added another acclaimed title to his slate before he'd even stepped behind the feature-film director's chair himself.

As an on-screen presence, Akay has shown up in films like Elephants and Grass (2001) and Killing the Shadows (2006), and more recently in the 2020 production Leyla Everlasting (TMDB). He's also known by the alias EZOP — though honestly, I'm not sure where that nickname originates or how widely it's used in the industry.