Yusuf Emre Yalçın is a London-based Turkish filmmaker whose work explores the connection between personal memory and political and social reality. Working in essayistic and hybrid documentary forms, he is drawn to questions of displacement, belonging, and the precarity that shapes contemporary life.
His film Anima, an essay documentary on the cultural and religious forms of violence against animals, won Best Documentary at the 40th Istanbul Film Festival and streamed on MUBI Türkiye. He has since completed In Passing, an essay documentary on migration, belonging and movement, and is currently developing a new documentary about a Syrian contemporary dancer.
Yalçın studied Cinema and Television at Kocaeli University and completed an MA in Film and Television at Istanbul Bilgi University, with a thesis on hybrid cinema. He worked as an assistant director and post-production coordinator on TV commercials, music videos and TV series, before turning to author documentary.
Alongside his own films, he also works with artists and cultural organisations as a documentary editor and self-shooting director. His commissioned works include Goethe-Institut Istanbul & Bucharest, From The Lips To The Moon, Kulturakademie Tarabya, War Resisters International, Sinopale and individual artists.
Yalçın builds spaces for others to make and show work. He founded and directed the Sinopale Film Festival (2016–2018) in a city without a permanent cinema, and is the founder of This Is Not A Screening! (TINAS), a pop-up open projection night in London dedicated to works-in-progress, feedback, and community-led solidarity among independent filmmakers. He co-founded the independent cinema initiative Festival Kit, where he writes essays and conducts interviews, and has served on festival juries including the Istanbul Film Festival.
He is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents (Talents Sarajevo, 2021) and the Ji.hlava Academy.
He lives and works in London.