Murat Akser

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Murat Akser (born September 8, 1972 in İstanbul, Turkey) is a Turkish-Canadian film director, film scholar and cultural historian.

Graduated from İSTEK Semiha Şakir High School in 1990. After attending Boğaziçi University, he got his BA in English in 1995 and an MA in History in 1999. He had his formal training in filmmaking at Directors Guild of Turkey in 1998 from renowned film directors such as Lütfü Akat, Memduh Un, Ömer Kavur, Nedim Otyam, Ertem Gorec, İlhan Arakon and Duygu Sağıroğlu. Later in 1999 he attended PhD seminars at MSU Turkish Film Institute by Metin Erksan and Halit Refiğ. In 1999 he came to Canada to study film at York University where he got his MA in Film and Video in 2002. Between 2001-05 he was a PhD student in Communication and Culture at Ryerson University. After seven years of teaching and research on cinema at academic level he has joined International Cinematographers' Guild in 2004. Currently he directs music videos and short films for Ronin Media and Entertainment Inc. Murat Akser is responsible for organizing Norman Jewison retrospective at Bloor Cinema in 2000.

His academic contributions are a book length study of Turkish intellectuals' experience in late 1960 through the novels they wrote after March 12, 1971 military coup in Turkey, another study on the cinema of Halit Refiğ and Turkish film parody.