Free Selda
TFI Suppport
TFI Network 2020
Logline
Celebrated around the world as Turkey’s first female rockstar, Selda Bağcan and her freedom fighting lyrics continue to hold national attention, despite decades of censorship, imprisonment and persecution. When first generation Turkish American filmmaker Amber Isbilen immigrates to her motherland to document the legendary musician, she unveils a story that goes way beyond a single person.
Amber Isbilen
Director, Producer
Founder of the U.S. based production company Infidel Films, and Turkish based production company Selda Film. Amber started making her own films in her teens. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California Santa Cruz in Film and Digital Media, with an emphasis on production. After university, she worked as a film encoder and curator for an online viewing platform specializing in foreign, classic and independent films. After moving to Los Angeles she worked for several years as a researcher for documentaries and feature films. She moved into production for films, commercials, and music videos. In her free time, Amber volunteered to work in various areas of production on short films produced by the American Film Institute (AFI), and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Shooting her own short films, Amber received her documentary-style training shooting the conditions of labor workers at a steel factory before moving to Turkey to pursue making the feature-length documentary, FREE SELDA.
Leyla Hamedi
Executive Producer
Leyla is a Turkish-Iranian producer, and screenwriter. She received her BA in film and digital media at Emerson College, Boston University and additional courses at Harvard, graduating top of her class. She previously worked as the editor and translator for the international record company Onearth Records, as well as the story editor for the screenplay analysis company Coverage Ink. She is a pop culture critic whose work has been featured in numerous publications.
Neslihan Oskay
Associate Producer
Neslihan offers practical solutions to team and time management. She is the go-to person to make anything happen on-set. She worked in advertisement, series, documentary and motion picture and as an assistant director for several years before producing.
Martina Haubrich
Co-Producer
Martina has worked on numerous documentaries in Germany before setting up Cala Film Productions in 2017. She produces both fiction and documentary films for cinema and television series for the international market.