Pelin Esmer was born and grew up in Istanbul. After she majored in sociology in Istanbul, she attended the cinema workshop of the Turkish director Yavuz Ozkan. She worked as a first assistant director in a number of Turkish and foreign projects. She gave lectures about documentary filmmaking at Istanbul Kadir Has University in Istanbul. She founded her own film company, Sinefilm, in 2005, and produced her own projects as an independent director and producer,together with her producer colleagues Tolga Esmer and Nida Karabol Akdeniz. Her first documentary film, The Collector (2002), was screened in many festivals. Her first feature documentary, Oyun (The Play), premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2005. It has screened in over 50 festivals around the world and received many awards, including "The Best New Documentary Filmmaker Award" at the Tribeca Film Festival. Her first feature, 10 to 11, was one of the six chosen projects by Cannes Film Festival's Résidence du Cinéfondation in Paris, where she worked on her script in 2007. An official selection of the San Sebastian Film
Festival, 10 to 11 received many awards in various festivals around the world. The directors of world's leading film festivals selected her as one of the world's most promising directors in the Take 100: The Future of Film: 100 New Directors (Phaidon). She completed her second feature fiction Watchtower in 2012.
Film Movement
