Ayşe Polat’s latest feature film, Im Toten Winkel (In the Blind Spot) – for which she wrote the screenplay, directed and co-produced – premiered at the 73rd Berlinale and has won numerous awards: 3 German Film Awards (Screenplay, Direction, Film), Istanbul (FIPRESCI Award), Istanbul Film Festival (Best National Film), Ankara (won in 7 categories), among others.

Her film career began in the early 1990s and she has remained loyal to Hamburg as a film location ever since. In 1992, she made the short film Fremdennacht about the suicide of asylum seeker Kemal Altun. This was followed in 1994 by the multi-award-winning short film Ein Fest für Beyhan, about a young German-Turkish woman who wants to break away from her family and find her freedom. Ayşe Polat made her feature film debut with Auslandstournee (1999), which was screened at film festivals in Karlovy Vary, at the Tokyo International Film Festival and in Ankara. At the Ankara International Film Festival, the film was awarded the prize for Best Director. Her second feature film, En Garde (2004), opened the Locarno Film Festival and received the Silver Leopard for Best Film and Best Leading Actresses. In 2005, Polat received the German Critics Award for En Garde.

In 2006, Polat directed her first play, Otobüs, at Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer theatre, which deals with the kidnapping of a group of German package tourists in Turkey. Her film Die Erbin (The Heiress), which she also produced, was screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film follows a young woman from Germany on her journey back to her late father’s homeland. Ayşe Polat was a fellow at the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul from 2013 to 2015. During this time, she shot her first documentary, Die Anderen. The film premiered at DOK Leipzig.

For television, she directed, among others, the Tatort – Masken and Tatort – Borowski und das unschuldige Kind von Wacken. Upcoming projects are Ein Platz in der Welt, based on the novel by Robert Walser, for which Ayşe Polat also wrote the screenplay, as well as Hinter Tausend Stäben which will be produced by X-Filme Creative Pool.

Ayşe Polat lives in Hamburg and Berlin.