Nicknamed “the ugly king”, he was the most popular actor in Turkey before going behind the camera to film Kurdish peasants and prisons — which earned him a return to them. Held from 1974, he sent his instructions by post: Yol, shot that way, won the Palme d'Or in 1982. His stone reads “Ylmaz”, one letter short.
The story
Born on 1 April 1937 near Adana, into a family of Kurdish day labourers, Güney became the most popular actor in Turkey — they called him the ugly king. A hundred films in ten years, and a fame that gave him the means to move behind the camera.
His films turned political: Kurdish peasants, Anatolian poverty, prisons. Prosecutions followed, for his writing as much as for his films, and shut him away several times.
Imprisoned in 1974, he went on working: he wrote the scripts, sent his directing instructions out by post and had his assistants shoot. Yol, la permission — known in English as “Yol”, the furlough — directed in this way by Şerif Gören, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1982. Güney had escaped the year before and reached Switzerland, then France.
Stripped of his Turkish nationality, he still shot Duvar — “The Wall” — in Paris. His films would stay banned in Turkey for some twenty years.
He died of cancer on 9 September 1984, aged forty-seven, and lies in Division 62, avenue du Boulevard, first row. His monument is neither stone nor marble: the architect Erdal Sorgucu made it out of aluminium.
The grave
A monument of aluminium designed by the architect Erdal Sorgucu (born 1959): the material is almost unique at Père-Lachaise, where marble and limestone reign, and it gives the grave a shifting gleam according to the hour. The inscription reads “Ylmaz Guney 1937-1984” — the first name shorn of its “i”, an engraving error never corrected. Flowers and ribbons are still renewed there forty years after the filmmaker's death.
On site, do not miss
The monument is aluminium: it changes hue with the light, which no stone in the cemetery does. Then read the engraved first name — a letter is missing.
Visitors' questions
Where is Yılmaz Güney's grave?
In Division 62, avenue du Boulevard, first row, in the eastern part of the cemetery. The aluminium monument can be picked out from afar. The grave remains a place of remembrance for the Kurdish and Turkish diasporas in France.
Joseph JoffoHow could Güney make a film from prison?
By writing the screenplay and sending his directing instructions by post to his assistant Şerif Gören, who shot the film in his place. That is how Yol, Palme d'Or in 1982, came to be made — before Güney's escape in 1981.
Ahmet KayaWhat is written on Yılmaz Güney's grave?
“Ylmaz Guney 1937-1984”: the first name is carved without its “i”, most likely a stonecutter's slip. The aluminium monument is by the architect Erdal Sorgucu — a material almost unique in Père-Lachaise.
Uğur HükümWhich other exiled artists rest at Père-Lachaise?
The Hungarian Imre Nagy, the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias, the Ukrainian Nestor Makhno and the American Richard Wright all have their graves here — every one of them died far from the country they had left, or that had driven them out.
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