İlker Canikligil

İlker Canikligil was born on May 26, 1972 in Istanbul. Although his family's roots are in Samsun, he was born and raised in this city. Canikligil, who started his education life at Saint-Joseph French High School, graduated from here in 1991 and enrolled in Marmara University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Cinema and Television.

To reinforce his interest in cinema during his university years, he shot three short films named On Duty in 1992, Tree in 1994 and I Want to Fly in 1995. Combining the theoretical education he received during this period with practical studies, Canikligil stepped into the advertising industry after his graduation.

After graduating from Marmara University, he started teaching cinema and television at Istanbul Bilgi University in 1999. At the same time, he translated Walter Murch's book While Blinking into Turkish and published it in 2005. In 2006, he left his job at the university and started to focus more on professional life.

In the same year, he edited the film Gen and won the Best Editing Award at the 13th Golden Boll Film Festival with this work. A year later, he published his book Cinema with Digital Video and this work found wide repercussion among cinema enthusiasts.

Continuing his career as an advertising director, Canikligil worked in various agencies for many years. Between 2010 and 2014, he taught cinematography at the photography and video department of Bahçeşehir University. In 2014, he started giving directing lessons at Istanbul Film Academy. The works of Canikligil, who is not only interested in cinema but also photography, took part in various exhibitions held both at home and abroad in 2013 and 2014.

His photographs were presented to art lovers at the CONTRA Contemporary Turkish Art Fair in London, Zorlu Center PSM and Contemporary Istanbul.

Canikligil's works on digital platforms also attract attention. In 2019, he established a channel called FluTV on YouTube and started to offer different content to his viewers. In addition to his photography works, he continues to share his experiences in cinema and advertising in the digital environment. However, the artist, who was arrested in March 2025 on the grounds of social media posts, was released on condition of judicial control approximately one and a half months later. This process had a wide public impact and brought about discussions about the artist's work.

Productions in which he took part

• SAVING İLKER CANİKLİGİL (2025)

Production and imprint information was taken from TMDB.