Short Bio: Burak Babayiğit is a Berlin-based filmmaker and photographer working across film, documentary, and installation. He began making films in Ankara at thirteen and has been working since. His shorts Machine (2011) and Black (2013) screened at festivals across Türkiye, Europe, and the United States. He founded Cambio Film Works & Cambio Global in Istanbul and now runs the company from Berlin, where he is also Artistic Programming Lead at Tanz der Kulturen e.V. His debut feature, Portakallar Günah Bilmez (Oranges Are Not Aware of Sin), is in development.
Long Bio:
Burak Babayiğit is a filmmaker, photographer, and director based in Berlin. He works across film, documentary, installation, and cultural programming.
He grew up in Ankara and started making films at thirteen; early enough that the habit of working took hold before anything else did. Beyaz ve Ben, his first short, reached the finals of a national interschool competition. Four years later, at seventeen, he shot a public service film that aired on every national channel in Türkiye, which made him, on paper, the youngest working cinematographer in the country at the time. In the same period he founded the Ankara Cinema Community (Ankara Sinema Topluluğu) a grassroots initiative he ran out of high school, organising screenings and short film productions in a city that had almost no infrastructure for independent cinema. He trained at AFSAD (Ankara Photography Artists Association), and moved through the city's small workshops gathering whatever could be gathered.
He earned a full scholarship to Bahçeşehir University's photography programme through a talent-based entrance examination, and moved to Istanbul. He spent those years on the directing crews at Böcek Yapım, Ptot Film, and Dinamo İstanbul while continuing to make his own work. Machine (2011) and Black (2013) screened at festivals in Türkiye and abroad. At nineteen he directed There! (Bi' O Kalmıştı), his first television film, which aired on Fox TV Türkiye in 2016.
In 2018 he stopped, on purpose. He spent a year with a backpack across Europe and South America, and the photographs he took on that road have stayed with him as a body of work he keeps returning to. Back in Istanbul he founded Cambio Film Works as an independent production company and Cambio Global as a creative agency. Both followed him to Berlin. He is a member of the Turkish Film and Television Union and the Bundesverband Regie (BVR).
Berlin opened up the practice. As Artistic Programming Lead at Tanz der Kulturen Berlin e.V., he develops projects at the intersection of film, dance, and community; a dance therapy workshop for visually impaired people in İzmir, a bilingual children's theatre piece performed in Turkish and German. Through Neue Heimat, Neue Geschichten (New Home, New Stories), he runs photography workshops at Berlin's Senate-affiliated second-chance schools, working with young adults who are learning the city and themselves at the same time, and discovering the camera as a tool that holds both still.
He is currently in post-production on Unfiltered: The Soundtrack of Our Bodies (2026), a thirty-screen video installation in which the body's unfiltered sounds; laughter, sobbing, a heartbeat, the grinding of teeth; play in sync with the faces that produce them.
His debut feature, Portakallar Günah Bilmez (Oranges Are Not Aware of Sin), is in development.
Teaching:
Berlin International University - guest lecture, Cutting for Style and Genre (Film Editing, 20-24. 04. 2026)
Zweiter Bildungsweg Neukölln / Tannenhof-Schule, Berlin - Photography (2026)
Elbe Grundschule, Berlin - Dance Theatre Project (2026)
Marmara Sanat Akademisi, Istanbul -Short Film Workshop (2013)
Education:
Cannes Film Festival, T-Port TalentBridge Workshop (2026)
YAPIMLAB, Istanbul - Producer's Workshop with Zeynep Özbatur Atakan (2021)
Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul - Photography & Video
AFSAD (Ankara Photography Artists Association) - Photography (2010 - 2012)