44th Istanbul Film Festival 11-22 April 2025 | HONORARY AND OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION AWARDS

Mavi Boncuk |

CINEMA HONORARY AWARD 

ZUHAL OLCAY

■ She graduated from Ankara State Conservatory. In the 1980s, she starred in various TV productions, including her first TV film, Sönmüş Ocak, and later Parmak Damgası. During this period, in addition to the screen, she also appeared on the stage with the play The Seagull (1986), which won her the Avni Dilligil Theatre Award, and the musical Evita (1989), which had a great influence on the beginning of her singing career.  She acted in Desperate Road (Ömer Kavur, 1985), and she won the Golden Film Strip Best Actress Award in Germany for her performance in Farewell to False Paradise (Tevfik Başer, 1989). Her success in cinema continued with The Secret Face (Ömer Kavur, 1991), based on Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Black Book, which won the Best Turkish Film of the Year Award at Istanbul Film Festival and the Best Film Award at Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. With Innowhereland (Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, 2002), she won many awards both in Turkey and abroad, notably at Istanbul Film Festival. In her artistic career, she has achieved success with numerous stage plays, films, and music albums. She won many awards, including the Most Successful Actress of the Year Award at the 26th Yapı Kredi Afife Theatre Awards for the play The Bald Soprano (2024). She has been serving as the President of the Actors’ Union since 2024.

OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO CINEMA 

GÜLİN ÜSTÜN

■ She worked at major international advertising agencies and established their production departments. In 2000 joined Atlantik Film, one of the largest feature film and commercial film production companies. She was in charge of the international promotion, marketing, and financing of feature films while finalising the sales to several territories including UK, France, Benelux, and the US. She established GU-FILM for production and consultancy for project development and marketing. After providing production services to several international films, she realised a co-production with Belgium. In 2006, she was on the advisory board of Meetings on the Bridge, the first co-production market of Türkiye. Between 2010 and 2023 she was the head of Meetings on the Bridge. She is a script advisor and also the film programming manager at Soho House İstanbul. She is an Eave and TorinoFilmLab Script&Pitch program alumna