CAA Signs Butterflies Director Tolga Karaelik (EXCLUSIVE)

CAA has signed Tolga Karaçelik, the Turkish director of Sundance-winning film “Butterflies,” for representation in all areas.

Based in Istanbul, writer-director Karaçelik is one of Turkey’s top film creatives and has previously been profiled by Variety. His films “Ivy,” set aboard a stranded cargo ship, and “Butterflies,” a dark comedy prompted by the death of his late uncle, both premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

“Butterflies” went on to receive the Park City, Utah festival’s Grand Jury Award in 2018, making Karaçelik the first Turkish director to win the prize.

After first getting a law degree in Turkey, Karaçelik went on to study filmmaking in New York before eventually returning to Turkey to film his debut feature “Toll Booth” (2010), about a Turkish toll-station worker with a vivid imagination. The pic won best first film, actor and cinematography at the country’s Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.

Karaçelik’s second film, “Ivy” (2015), was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema (Drama) at the Sundance Film Festival, and went on to win awards at dozens of film festivals around the world.

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In 2019, Karaçelik made the jump into television, directing an episodic series called “I, Bartu” for the Turkish digital platform BluTV, which was well received by critics and audiences alike. He’s currently developing his fourth feature film, which is scheduled to shoot in 2022.

Recently, Karaçelik worked as a director on the Netflix series “Yakamoz S-245,” a spinoff show set on a military submarine that takes place in the universe of the Netflix sci-fi series “Into the Night,” in which a hijacked plane must keep traveling to outrace the sun following an environmental event.

Nick Vivarelli contributed to this story.

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Update: 2024-06-04

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