Yılmaz Güney (né Pütün) 1 April 1937 – 9 September 1984) was a Kurdish film director, screenwriter, novelist, actor and communist political activist.

Besides working in the fields he had several other jobs including movie delivery boy, horse-cart driver and writing short stories for a local magazine.

[10] His writing brought him into difficulties with the authorities, especially for a short story he wrote about a person aiming for a better world, which was deemed Communist propaganda and for which he had to stand trial.

[14] Through Yeşilçam, the Turkish studio system, a handful of directors, including Atıf Yılmaz, began to use cinema as a means of addressing the problems of the people.

[citation needed] Yılmaz Güney, a gruff-looking young actor who earned the moniker Çirkin Kral (Turkish: The Ugly King) or "Paşay Naşirîn" in Kurdish, was one of the most popular new names to emerge from this milieu.

After working as an apprentice screenwriter for and assistant to Atıf Yılmaz, he began appearing in as many as twenty films a year and became one of Turkey's the most popular actors.

[citation needed] However, in 1957 Güney was accused of Communist propaganda just weeks after settling in Istanbul and was sentenced in May 1958 to seven and a half years imprisonment,[15] a verdict against which he appealed.

[8] Arrested for harbouring anarchist students, he was jailed in 1972 during preproduction for Zavallılar (The Miserable, 1975), and before completing Endişe (Worry, 1974), which was finished by his assistant, Şerif Gören.

Released from prison in 1974 as part of a general amnesty,[8] Güney was re-arrested that same year and charged with shooting Sefa Mutlu, the judge of the Yumurtalık district in Adana province, dead in a night club during a drunken row.

[citation needed] In 2019 Çehre shared details of her relationship with Güney asa guest on the programme Şafak Yavuz's Visor.

It was not until 1983 that Güney resumed directing, telling a brutal tale of imprisoned children in his final film, Duvar (The Wall, 1983), which was made in France with the cooperation of the French government.

[35] The first Kurdish language biography of Güney titled Yilmaz Guney by Karzan Kardozi, was published by Xazalnus Publication in Sulaymaniyah in 2018.