Erol Mintaş
Erol Mintaş is a filmmaker and doctoral researcher in the Department of Film, Television, and Scenography at Aalto University in Helsinki. He completed his graduate studies in computer science and earned his MA in cinema, writing his thesis on Tarkovsky’s cinema and existentialism in film. After directing several short films and documentaries, Mintaş’s debut feature Song of My Mother won the Heart of Sarajevo Award for Best Film and Best Actor at the Sarajevo Film Festival. The film went on to receive fourteen awards worldwide.
In 2018, Mintaş founded the Academy of Moving People and Images (AMPI) in Helsinki, designed for BIPOC and mobile/moving people—those who have arrived in Finland for various reasons, including displacement, forced migration, studies, asylum, employment, or love.