Directing

Arun Ayduğan

Arun Ayduğan is a Turkish director, screenwriter, actor, and theatre director, born in 2010. He began working in theatre at an early age and has since developed a body of work spanning both stage and independent cinema. Among his early theatre projects is the one-man show Mozart Was Also a Child, which he wrote, directed, and performed, and which received invitations to two art festivals. He later worked as the writer and actor of Waiting for Hamlet and, during the 2026/27 theatre season, directed works by Anton Chekhov. In cinema, Ayduğan began developing The Mind Trilogy in late 2024, with production taking place in the first week of January 2025. The project received official selections at the Lift-Off Film Festival and the Filmroads International Student Film Festival. His next major project, Fallen From Olympus, was developed over a period of two and a half years and was shot entirely in Homeric Greek. The film was officially selected for the Lift-Off Film Festival in the United Kingdom in July 2026 and was later screened for an audience on September 4, 2026, at the Troy Museum in Çanakkale, Turkey, as part of the Cultural Route Festival. It subsequently received selections at INNOVART and the Four River Film Festival. At the 19th Four River Film Festival in 2026, Fallen From Olympus won the Best Free Style Film award. Ayduğan has also received an Honorable Mention at the Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival. He is currently developing Exile (L'exile), a historical drama centered on the final period of Napoleon Bonaparte's life, following The Mind Trilogy and Fallen From Olympus as the next stage of his independent filmmaking career.