I make moving images about presence—how bodies remember, how ritual holds grief and hope, and how land shapes us back.
I am the first Turkish filmmaker to receive Mountainfilm’s Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship, and my recent work has screened at festivals including Mountainfilm, BendFilm and Newport Beach, winning the Audience Award at Nevada City Film Festival.
I grew up between Istanbul and the mountains of southern Türkiye, and I’ve lived nomadically for long stretches. That mix of city and steppe taught me to listen for rhythm. My practice sits between documentary and visual art, part observation, part composition. I travel light, often alone or with a tiny crew, spending time before I press record. The work is slow and collaborative. I let gesture, breath, and weather lead.
My photographs and films speak to each other. Sometimes a single image is enough, sometimes a film is needed to breathe. I’m drawn to communities who keep tradition alive while inventing new forms, and to the ordinary tenderness that carries them through each day. That same pull is behind my episodic documentary series Story of the Lost Goddess, which traces the sacred feminine from the goddess temples of Neolithic Anatolia through Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and early Christianity, and Crowned, a photo series on Anatolian women’s headdresses as cultural archives, published in KAFA and WAASTAA and growing into an installation and a book.
Lately the same questions have led me somewhere new. Eye to I, my first technology project, asks what happens when two strangers truly look at each other, and turns presence and being seen into an experience anyone can step into. My book The Sky Holds All of This arrives in May 2027.
Across all mediums I aim for clarity and care. My work has been exhibited internationally, from Istanbul and London to Tokyo and the United States. Images that feel lived-in and true.
Awards & Recognitions
2026 — Audience Award Winner, Nevada City Film Festival · Official Selection, Mountainfilm (Telluride), Mountainfilm Graz, BendFilm, Newport Beach Film Festival, Buffalo International Film Festival · Eye to I, Elif’s first technology project, in which two strangers sit in silence seeing only each other’s eyes while their heartbeats are recorded, launched at the Museum of Us (San Diego) · Film screening & panel guest, Mingei International Museum (San Diego) · CROWNED series published in KAFA and WAASTAA · Featured in Telluride Times and on the Mountain & Prairie podcast.
2025 — Mountainfilm Emerging Filmmaker Fellow, first Turkish filmmaker selected · SCIxART Project Artist, University of Cambridge · Co-directed Peaks of Belonging — 5Point × STIO Film Grant · Directed & produced Shaereh · Developing a new episodic series in Türkiye and Greece · Profiled in Daily Sabah.
2024 — Directed & produced Enigmatic Cowboy, published & exhibited by Fujifilm US.
2023 — Solo exhibition Nature’s Luminescence within the Human Spirit, Scalehouse Gallery (Oregon) · Group exhibition, Tuck Reunion Art Show with Zarastro Art.
2022 — Bridging the Gap — official selections & awards including BendFilm, San Diego Art Film Fest (Winner), Los Angeles Independent Women Film Awards, Berlin International Art Film Festival, Festival Internacional de Imagem de Natureza (Nat Geo Portugal), Klamath Film Festival · Fundraising screening with Puffin Drinkwear for Think Wild (300+ attendees) · Finalist, Oregon Wild Photo Competition (Forgotten Places, Land That Speaks) · Luise series in 212 Istanbul Photography Exhibition (Mixer Gallery).
2020 — ARTPIL Tokyo — 30 Under 30 Women Photographers.
2019 — Blue Green Earth Foundation — Nature Photography Award.
2017 — One-year solo exhibition, Istanbul Museum of Photography (series: Thunder Birds, Syrian Benjamin Button, Eternity of Nature and Soul) · Details in Nature, Semi-Finalist, Miami Epic Film Festival · Good Morning Luise, “Film of the Week,” Awardeo.
2016 — First solo film & photo exhibition Eternity of Nature and Soul, hosted by the Austrian Consulate · Photo “Wolf” selected for Travel + Leisure: 100 Stunning Photos of the World.
2015 — Sony World Photography Awards — Commended Photographer, exhibited at Somerset House (London).
