Ece Soydam

She was born in 1971 in Ankara, Turkey. She has studied English Language Teaching at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. After graduating in 1992, she started working for the Department of Documentary Programs at the Turkish public television channel TRT. She worked for another 2 years as production assistant for the news program CNN World Report. Meanwhile, she translated the books "Touch the Earth" (1994) and "Indians of the United States" (1996) into Turkish. She spent 2 years in Canada (1996-1998), doing her graduate study on Social Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto, specializing in Native Americans. Coming back to Turkey, she became permanent at TRT. She went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA (2002) and completed a four-month "Ethnographic Films and Visual Anthropology" certificate program. Back at TRT, she started directing and producing wildlife films. Her documentaries "Children of the Steppe: The Anatolian Wild Sheep" (2004), "Giant Wings: The Black Vulture" (2006), "Bear vs Man: The Endless Conflict" (2010), "On the Trail of Sitting Bull" (2011), "Birds, Jackals and the Others" (2013), "Wolf" (2016), "67 49 32 North" and "Secret of the Forest: The Caracal" (2023) have won numerous national and international awards.