Maryna Er Gorbach
Directing
Biography
Maryna Er Gorbach is Ukrainian director and screenwriter. She has received multiple accolades, including the Ecumenical Jury Prize in the Panorama section at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival for her film Klondike, which was also selected as Ukraine’s official submission for the Academy Awards 2023 in the Best International Feature Film category. Maryna studied at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University and subsequently at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing in Poland. She has been a member of the European Film Academy since 2017. She made the films Black Dogs Barking, Love Me and Omar and Us together with her husband Mehmet Bahadir Er. Klondike is the first film she has written and directed alone. In 2026, her short film Rotation premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film was created within The Displacement Film Fund, an initiative by two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett, bringing together five filmmakers from around the world, including Mo Harawe, Mohammad Rasoulof, Hasan Kattan, Shahrbanoo Sadat, and Maryna Er Gorbach.
Known For
Across a language barrier, a Turkish groom-to-be on an engagement party in Kyiv meets a Ukrainian that represents the 'other woman' for a marriage there.
Love Me
The story of a Ukrainian family living on the border of Russia and Ukraine during the start of the war. Irka refuses to leave her house even as the village gets captured by armed forces. Shortly after they find themselves at the center of an international air crash catastrophe on July 17, 2014.
Klondike
Restless and young, best buddies Selim and Çaça live a meager existence on the outskirts of Istanbul. By day they breed pigeons on the roof, by night they roam the streets with their entourage in their pimped-up car, "My Orange Angel". Their neighborhood's view of the city's gigantic business towers accelerates their ambitions. The two buddies want to open their own parking-lot business near a gigantic mall, and they just might get lucky, since they're supported by the local mafia boss.
Black Dogs Barking
Ali Tarantula, who has passed his middle age, is half-educated, half-crazy, has a strange authority, who is trying to overcome the problem that the city will swallow him up by taking on a crazy character. This, Ali Tarantula, one day he gets obsessed with the offside rule in football...
No Offside
Ismet is a Turkish soldier, who was on duty at the border as a Commander of the Coast Guard and recently got retired. Now as a civilian, he struggles to communicate with his family and people surrounding him. His only son abandoned him and left to the U.S.
Omar and Us
“Rotation” is a therapeutic hypnosis ritual experienced by a young Ukrainian woman who shifted from civilian life to military service. She needs support to adapt to the displaced reality she now lives in.