Biography

Yusuf Aslanyurek was born in Moscow, Russia, in 26^th of February, 1982. His father is a Turkish screenwriter, director and academician, and his mother a geology engineer. He goes to Turkey at the age of 6. After graduating from the technical college for electronics,

his career in cinematography has started when he became an assistant to Hayk Kirakosyan, who began working in Turkey at that time (away from home - 1999). After his first feature film as an assistant cameraman, Yusuf continued assisting Hayk Kirakosyan(Russia) Ugur Icbak(Turkey) and Avi Karpic(Israel) in numerous advertisements and videoclips. Yusuf assisted Kirakosyan in all of his feature films until 2002, and then he decided to attend the All Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow, from which his father and Kirakosyan was also graduated. He became a student of Leonid Kalashnikov, and he left VGIK upon his master’s death in 2006. During his education at VGIK, he gained extensive experience in the shooting of many 35mm short movies. While providing him invaluable education in cinematography, VGIK has also raised his self-confidence having the highest grades in his faculty at VGIK, he transferred to and graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Marmara University, in which his father works as an academician. Shortly after his return to Turkey, he worked as the second unit director of photography in “Hacivat ve Karagöz Neden Öldürüldü”, a feature film directed by Ezel Akay. After this project, his interest in chemistry led him to work as the lab manager for Safak Film Laboratories, which also undertook the post production of the project. While establishing his own lab during this period, he took notes of his experiments for a future book he wants to publish, and shared the results with his cinematographer colleagues.  A few months later, he started to work as co cinematographer with Eyup Boz, the director of photography of his father’s project, Eve Giden Yol. When Eyup Boz left the project, Yusuf completed the film, and it became his first feature film as a director of photography. After finishing the movie, he started to work with Ezel Akay shooting commercials and music videos as cinematographer. Same year, he founded his company ASLANYUREK FILM and joined SE-SAM. He produced his first film in 2009 (7 courtyards)