Kutlug Ataman was born in Istanbul in 1961. He studied Film at UCLA from where he graduated with an MFA in 1988. Since then, he has pursued an international career as a filmmaker and visual artist.

He began his career as a film director with two short films, Hansel and Gretel (1984), which won the Peter Stark production award, and La fuga (1988), which screened at various festivals including Oberhausen,Turin, and San Antonio, and received the CINE Golden Eagle Award at Washington D.C., 1st prize at the New York International Film Expo 1988, and a certificate of merit at the Chicago Film Festival 1989. He then wrote and directed three feature films (The Serpent’s Tale [1993], Lola and Bilidikid [1998] and 2 Girls [2005]), which screened at numerous festivals and won numerous awards both in Turkey and abroad. He is currently filming his fourth feature film, The Coat, in Cyprus.

As a video artist, he has participated in many group exhibitions, while he has held solo exhibitions at some of the world’s major museums. His most important video installations include Kutlug Ataman’s Semiha b. Unplugged (1997), Women Who Wear Wigs (1999), Martin is Asleep (1999), Never My Soul (2001), The Four Seasons of Veronica Read (2002) and Küba (2005). In 2004, Ataman was short-listed for the Turner Award, one of the most prestigious modern art awards worldwide, and he won the Carnegie Prize in 2004-5.

Ataman shares his time between Buenos Aires, London and Istanbul.