Ömür Atay is an award-winning director who has been making films for nearly three decades. A graduate of the Fine Arts School of Istanbul Marmara University, he started with short films while still at school. His short film Necropolis won several Best Film awards at national and international festivals, providing an excellent initiation into the world of cinema. Later successes with Anlat Istanbul, Kardeşler only solidified his position as a revered Turkish filmmaker.
Even though Necropolis holds a special place in his heart as one of his favorite projects and for the stage it created for him to shine, he has only gone from strength to strength since then. From many other short films, feature films, anthologies, dizis, and limited series for digital platforms, his breadth of experience is evident in what he presents. As lead director for the currently running top primetime series Kızıl Goncalar (Red Roses), Ömür is riding a new high of popularity. We are excited to have the opportunity to present him to our readers!
The Journey Into Filmmaking
Ömür grew up in a family with a fondness for oral and written generational stories with colorful characters from history and the present day. Combining his love for reading and drawing with endless narratives of mythology, heroism, migration and exile, and everything in between, he fell in love with the art of storytelling. During his childhood in the '70s to the early '80s, he enjoyed the movie classics shown on the lone TV channel TRT (the first private channel Star TV did not go on air until 1989). TRT’s excellent curation of films had a great influence on him. By the time he was in 7th or 8th grade, he had clarity about his future and knew he wanted to pursue the world of cinema.
He started his career with a short film, but traversing different genres is an intertwined process. During and after that period, Ömür studied cinema at the Faculty of Fine Arts, and he started to work as an assistant in film, commercial, and series projects. In his third year of university, he did his first set internship on the sets of Atıf Yılmaz's 1994 film Night, Angel and Our Children.
Atıf Yılmaz is a legendary figure in Turkish cinema and best known for being the first real feminist of the ‘director’s cinema’ period that started in the 1950s. Throughout his prolific career, Yılmaz made 110 films, with his last film in 2005. He passed away in May 2006. Of this experience, Ömür says, “I feel very lucky in this regard. As a young film student, it was incredible to be on the set of Atıf Hoca, one of the legends of cinema. I still remember my excitement.”
Ömür has also worked with Zeki Demirkubuz, another highly decorated, illustrious name in Turkish cinema. His film “Hayat” is chosen as Turkey’s entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards to be held in 2025. Of working with Demirkubuz, Ömür says, “When I was working as an assistant in commercials, there was a period when I worked as an assistant to Zeki Demirkubuz, who was also my teacher. Before that, when I was a student, I had seen Zeki Demirkubuz's first film C Blok in the cinema and admired it. I remember thinking to myself that this must be cinema. Later, I had the chance to work with Zeki Hoca.”
The pedigree of Ömür’s training shows in the sophistication of his frames. As he gained more experience, he moved from being an assistant to starting to direct TV series. The longer form of storytelling in dizis appealed to him. Of the completed dizi projects he has worked on thus far, he mentions An Istanbul Tale as leaving an impression.
Kızıl Goncalar: The Director’s Cut
Since December 2023, Gold Yapim-produced Kızıl Goncalar has made its mark as a greatly discussed series that addresses important, contemporary social issues through a fictional lens. With a rich screenplay, the series showcases the philosophical and physical conflicts between the secular and the religious in Türkiye. Though set in Istanbul, where we see a fictitious Sufi tariqah clash against a Kemalist family, the theme is not uncommon in the Western world, where deepening divides between the conservative and the liberal also manifest in various ways. Ömür is co-directing the show with Özgür Sevimli.
Ömür says, “When Kızıl Goncalar was mentioned to me as a project in its first form, to be honest, I was not interested without thinking too deeply about the project’s potential. Later, when the screenplay was a little deeper, I had the chance to read it again. This time, I read it from a very different perspective, and it definitely piqued my interest. What changed my mind was the overlap of the project with our current life and the unique flair of its intended messages. It was a project that involved risks for all of us, including a risk of commercial failure, but our producer, screenwriter and our team all believed in Kızıl Goncalar. I can say that its success was, therefore, no surprise.”
I can say that [Kızıl Goncalar's] success was no surprise.
Defining Characteristics: Realism and Structure
The universe around the tariqah is a rare slice of life seen on television. According to Ömür, realizing a consistent directorial backbone is first and foremost rooted in the concept of the project. He says, “To me, the realistic world of Kızıl Goncalar has similar characteristics to the independent short and long film realizations and perspectives I have experienced before. In fact, my guide in projecting and realizing the project was 'Realism', which we don't see much in TV series in Turkey, and it was combined with an appropriate directorial language, cinematography and actor management.”
The dizi world works under tremendous schedule pressures. Even though a series might start with 2-4 stock episodes in hand, that buffer soon disappears once the season is underway, and most productions fall into a weekly shooting schedule. Often, the final editing of the episode is completed a couple of days before broadcasting. Relative to this typical dizi production structure, Kızıl Goncalar stands out. Ömür says, “When we are shooting this season, we can shoot scenes from episodes 1, 2, 3, and even 4 and 5 on the same day, in a mixed way. Since our script structure often jumps back and forth in time, sometimes we can shoot scenes from different episodes on the same day if they share a spatial or contextual integrity. For example, this week I have the scripts of the first four episodes in front of me and we are shooting them together. In the 5th episode, I can say that we are checking the connections.”
Due to its nuanced content, the project requires very good preparation and research in terms of realization. “Our consultants and experts are often with us during the preparation, are on the set and accompany the shootings. Therefore, the preparation runs parallel to the set. Of course, our directorial and production teams start the preparation first. Then, our preparation process continues with meetings and briefings with art, location, cast, image and other departments and decision-making processes.”
Multiple members of the Kızıl Goncalar cast have been lauded for their strong performances. From marking the return of Özgü Namal to the screens after many years to the creation of an iconic character such as Cüneyd by Mert Yazıcıoğlu, we have asked how Ömür gets the best out of his actors. He says, “You have to believe first so that you can invite the audience into that world,” which transcends into the coherence that gets created on set, starting with the casting process. “A harmonious and productive director and actor relationship starts with dialogue. We need to develop a common story - memory, behavior, and emotional field - so that we can imagine the same thing. Afterward, the set naturally turns into a performance space.
We have many 'blessings' among our actors. After a certain stage, good actors dress their characters in such a way that even if you choose or create that actor/character yourself, it seems as if no one else can wear that dress.”
Given the depth of the story being told in Kızıl Goncalar, we asked about the favorite scene(s). “Naturally, you may like some episodes and blocks more based on your own personal likes and feelings. For example, there are episodes 3 and 7 of Season 1 that come to my mind first. They were my favorite episodes. Sometimes, some scenes within an episode leave a mark in my mind on their own.”
What are some of the difficulties of shooting the scenes we asked. He replied: “It may sound exaggerated, but every scene is difficult. I'm not talking about physical difficulties, of course. Even a phone call scene should serve the purpose of writing the scene with its form and emotion. If you say physical difficulties, we shoot many, very crowded scenes.”
We had to try our luck and ask about what to expect in Season 2 but, of course, he was diplomatic! He said, “I can say that more exciting and deeper character stories await us.”
With a few episodes underway in the second season by at press time of this interview, we can confirm that the series has taken interesting twists and turns, pushing into different levels of character development from the ones we came to know in Season 1. As filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu says, “Cinema is a mirror by which we often see ourselves.” The important screenplay in Kızıl Goncalar, its production value, and directorial approach have certainly held up a mirror to our contemporary societies and make us ponder on existential philosophies. That is the hallmark of excellent cinema, and kudos to Ömür and his team for bringing this to life.
For young artists and filmmakers, he says, “If you have entered the sector and are in this field, there is a moment when you will say, this is my profession, and this is what I will do next. You need to evaluate yourselves very accurately at a given moment in time. You are in a very hard and difficult place where success is directly proportional to who you are and your development, and of course you should not forget the luck factor. You should look at yourselves, not the people around you. Because everyone's story, orientation and success criteria are different. Don’t forget: what determines our career is not what we say 'Yes' to, but what we say 'No' to.”
This treasured interview paints the picture of an accomplished, well-trained, visionary filmmaker who would love to delve into a period piece or a crime-thriller genre as his next adventure. From exploring technical innovation to other filmmaking techniques, Ömür focuses on understanding the needs of a project and taking the right position accordingly. Having worked on all sorts of structures, platforms, and mediums, the innumerable differences based on the script or casting process, music, technical needs, or directorial language boil down to one invariant. That is, “the most basic and similar element in the directing process is that you believe in the story and the world you are telling.”
Kızıl Goncalar (Red Roses) is distributed globally by Global Agency.
interview by mh musings for Dizilah
thanksÖmür Atay
thanks Global Agency