Me
Yavuz Selim Isler (me) is a Dutch-Turkish cinematographer living in the Netherlands.
It’s quite funny to explain how I started. Without making it too cliche, I was once this 8 year old boy with an obsession for film, so I made stop-motion videos with my lego toys. I’ve always been a creative spirit because I drew a lot, but making videos was something that fascinated me the most.
When I was 14 I was tired about being an amateur so I knocked on the door of the local tv station to ask if I could work there as a cameraman and editor. Which I did, for about 5 years.
Then I went to study at the Graphic Lyceum in Rotterdam to make my step to film. My teacher Peterjan van der Burgh taught me the art of cinematography and Robert M. Berger helped me to gain more set experience. With my friend Bob Lemm I graduated in 2017 with the short documentary film Boxer which was one of the first films I did that made me really proud of the result!
In the summer of 2017 I shot my first feature film Stille Storm directed by Guido Coppis. After that I was admitted to go to the Netherlands Film Academy for cinematography, during my study I did some really cool stuff like shooting on 16mm film for Mehmet & Tim and Als Er Gedanst Is, I also met director Shriejan Paudel who makes the sort of films I really enjoy making. So we’re good friends now. We did shoot the thriller Para in 2020 and political ‘middle finger’ film Viral in 2021. A nice and controversial movie about how unfair the system is against minorities of color.
In 2022 I worked with director Ali Asgari on the film About Me, who is travelling around Oscar qualifying festivals in Europe and the US. Recently, I shot the short film On My Way which is a film about social anxiety.
I also work as a camera operator, in 2021 I operated the Netflix original Dirty Lines for dp Mick van Rossum, the tv movie De Sterfshow for dp Joris Bulstra and the American feature film Unfavorable Odds for Michael Hawthorne.
For me, the most important thing is, that the film touches the audience and I’m not afraid of using style to get there. I honestly don’t care about all the minimalistic cinema, I just wanna use my tools as a cinematographer to get a certain emotion and look. That’s what I’m for. Less is more doesn’t exist in my film-vocabulary. No, without kidding. I won’t hold myself back, creatively. So if that’s what you’re looking for, let’s grab a hot chocolate (I don’t drink coffee).
