İlker Çatak was born in Berlin, Germany in 1984 and grew up in Istanbul before studying film directing in Berlin and Hamburg. He made a name for himself with I Was, I Am, I Will Be (2019), which won the Bronze German Film Award for Best Feature Film. The Teachers′ Lounge (2023) won the Berlinale′s Label Europa Cinemas Award and the German Film Award for Best Feature Film, and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. His latest film, Yellow Letters, about a theater couple who lose their jobs amid Turkey′s authoritarian crackdown, won the Golden Bear at the 2026 Berlinale — the first time in 22 years that a German-born director had taken the festival′s top prize, since Fatih Akin′s Head-On (2004).
