İrfan Atasoy

İrfan Atasoy was born in Adana on February 3, 1937, and died of a heart attack in Istanbul on February 3, 2022, at the age of 85. Atasoy, one of the versatile names of Turkish cinema, has worked as an actor, producer, screenwriter and director.

Born in Adana, Atasoy's family originates from Antakya. He started working in the decoration department of cinema companies in his youth, and after completing his military service, he entered the world of cinema by writing his script called "Hero Three" at the age of 24. He started his acting career with the movie "İnce Cumali" in 1967; He starred in this production with his childhood friend Yılmaz Güney. “İnce Cumali” won a total of four Golden Orange awards at the Antalya Film Festival, in the categories of Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor.

In the same year, he took part in the movie "Killing in Istanbul", based on the comic book character, and continued this production with the movie "Killing Against the Flying Man". In both films, he played the roles of the professor's son Orhan and "Flying Man Shazem"; The films were directed by Yılmaz Atadeniz. These two productions achieved great success at the box office and ignited a "Killing" wave in Yeşilçam.

Atasoy married Semiha Yankı's sister, Hamiyet Yankı, in 1971. Unfortunately, his daughter Aslı, born from this marriage, died when she was four months old.

In the following years, he made many films in the fields of acting, directing, screenwriting and production and won various awards. In addition, he pioneered the production of films with foreign partners that had never been seen before in Turkey; He has carried out joint projects with international names such as Gordon Mitchell, Richard Harrison, Alicia Leone, Don Backy.

He explained his motivation behind turning to cinema with difficult experiences such as being imprisoned for allegedly stealing money while he was shooting five European films, being tried for a long time, and having his film rights taken away.

Atasoy, who took a break from cinema in 1978, focused on film imports and movie theater management. He has undertaken the screenings of many important productions in Turkey, such as "Butterfly", "Enemy of the People", "Trotsky" (1993), "Red Bells", "Mexila in Flames" and "Caravan".

Atasoy, who received various awards throughout his life, received the Lifetime Honor Award at the 12th Golden Boll Film Festival in 2005. He won four Golden Orange awards in the categories of Best Film, Best Screenplay (Türkan Duru), Best Director (Yılmaz Duru) and Best Supporting Actor (Erol Taş) at the 1968 Antalya Golden Orange with his movie "İnce Cumali". He also won an award at the Golden Boll Film Festival in 1971 with his work "Tomorrow is the Last Day".

İrfan Atasoy was born on February 3, 1937 in Adana, Türkiye. He died on February 3, 2022.

Productions in which he took part

He took part in 35 productions in total; 12 of the most well-known are listed.

• Night and Day (2008)
• The Golden Boll (1969) — Self - Winner
• Darkness of the Sun (2009) — Dr. Burak
• Let Me Be a Sacrifice (1976)
• Yeşilçam Sea (2003)
• Hamal (1976) — Yusuf
• İnce Cumali (1967) — Cafer
• Engine: Copy Culture and Popular Turkish Cinema (2019)
• Four Rascals (1975) — Tony Tiger
• Shoot On Sight (1976) — Larry Foster (as Tony Tiger)
• Yılmaz Güney: Adana-Paris (1995)
• Five Rascals (1971)

Production and imprint information was taken from TMDB.