The Creative Women’s Workshop Association (CWWA) selects some of the most talented women and non-binary persons every year to participate in their Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) program. This helps bring more stories from Canadian women and non-binary individuals to Canadian and global communities. One of 2024’s participants is Zeynep Güler-Tuck.
Zeynep Güler-Tuck is a Turkish-Canadian director and producer. She has some incredible experience with origins in science and technology. We had a chance to have a conversation with Zeynep.
HNMAG: Let’s start with you. Where are you right now?
Zeynep: I’m in Toronto right now. I attended the Reelworld Film Festival, thanks to the Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) program.
HNMAG: Do you live in Toronto?
Zeynep: I’m working on projects in Vancouver at the moment, but I grew up in Toronto. I go back and forth a lot, so I’m a bit of a cross-country gal.
HNMAG: How long ago did you move to Vancouver?
Zeynep: The first time I moved there was in 2015, when I worked in the media division for Microsoft News as an editor. We were hired to help other newsmakers like The New York Times, USA Today, and Conde Nast transition into the digital environment. I became an editor and I went from print to digital and did this fast-track into the tech industry. It took five years to get my “PhD” in digital media from 2015 till about 2020. During the pandemic, though, we moved back to Toronto for a few years and now we’re back in Vancouver working on some projects.
HNMAG: Where did you grow up?
Zeynep: I was born and raised in Toronto’s Scarborough neighbourhood. Then, I actually did a reverse immigration as a child. Our family relocated to Istanbul for six years.
HNMAG: That must’ve been a unique experience.
Zeynep: It was, it was a very cool thing. I mean, my parents wanted us to fit in and assimilate while living in Toronto. As Turkish immigrants, they wanted us to be immersed in the local culture. When they moved to Turkiye, I didn’t speak the language, so I had a fish-out-of-water situation. We’re used to the immigration story. Mine was a bit of a reverse of that. I decided to make a movie out of it. That’s the premise of the movie I’m actually bringing to the WIDC Career Advancement program.
HNMAG: What stage is your movie at right now?
Zeynep: It’s in full development right now, in the script stage. It’s been slow because what I really want is to direct this film. So, scriptwriting is a new skill for me. My preference has always been directing and producing, coming from the digital media, commercials, and branded content space. Now that I’m in development, I’m looking for funding to get it to the next phase, then up on screen. I’m very excited about that!
HNMAG: Is it scripted? Is it a comedy?
Zeynep: That’s a great question! It’s scripted. A feel-good, funny feature about coming of age, global competition, and the changing relationship between a mother and daughter. Comedies have really been a mainstay in my life and have gotten me through some of the tough times. I think comedy has the ability to do that. I know a lot of those stories can be tough stories about cross-cultural misunderstandings. There are difficulties and my aim and goal is to really tell the more funny happenstances that connect people.
HNMAG: Is it set in Istanbul and Canada?
Zeynep: Both! It’s going to be shot in Canada and Turkiye. We follow the 15-year-old lead whose family relocates from suburban Toronto to big city Istanbul, Turkiye – which very much mimics my upbringing. It’s about a girl who is really smart and into science, but when she moves, she feels a loss of belonging and self-worth. I felt this, deeply, like I had lost myself when I moved to a new place. My protagonist overcomes the naysayers and her own negative self-talk to fit in and, ultimately, succeed.
HNMAG: What’s the title?
Zeynep: Solve For Her.
HNMAG: Like the character in Solve For Her, you experienced a vastly different culture when you moved from Canada. How much Turkish content do we find here?
Zeynep: We don’t have a lot of Turkish content. We have a very big Turkish community here in Toronto. It’s a little bit less in Vancouver, but still a great community. And great food! For content, I’ll see some shows on Netflix but I’m still seeing a lack of representation of Turkish culture and Turkish stories on screens and I want to be able to change that.
HNMAG: You’ve had a successful career before focusing on film and TV. Where did you work before?
Zeynep: Microsoft’s media division. We were leveraging technology to tell stories. That’s something that I’m bringing into my work in the entertainment space. It’s an interesting skill set because it allows me to adapt to where the entertainment space is headed. I thought it was a weakness for many years. I’m now leveraging this as a strength, and to be able to see the entire digital ecosystem, for me, has been a superpower, because I can see the different touch points with an audience that aren’t just a film.
HNMAG: How did that change into film and television work? Were you always interested in film and television? What was the emphasis for moving from tech media to film and television?
Zeynep: That’s a great question. It’s interesting because in the media space, I spent a lot of time producing stories on behalf of brands and subject matter experts; telling slice-of-life stories through a producer brain. How do we fulfill this vision, and take it from point A to point B to maximize the views, right?!? The real turning point happened when I joined Women in Film Toronto, then the Firecracker Department, to connect with some of the women and non-binary people in the film community. I started building relationships with women and non-binary creatives, directors, producers, and I felt more empowered to tell stories to large audiences through my own lived experience and cultural lens.
HNMAG: The skill that eludes many of us, is the producer’s brain. What is that about?
Zeynep: Ah yes. It’s the ability to have that bird’s eye view of a project with an objective and end goal in mind. To be able to shepherd that project from this beautiful idea through fundraising, and then to be able to bring it to the screen and make it relevant and discoverable across different platforms.
HNMAG: You are writing a story that’s very authentic and original that’s partially set in Canada and is about a Canadian character. What do you think can be done to move that landscape where we are making more movies about ourselves and the world?
Zeynep: It’s important to note the kinds of films and television shows that are getting made today in Canada. While we have one of the most robust funding systems in the world, we are still facing massive barriers to access.
HNMAG: Yeah…
Zeynep: There are gatekeepers and the traditional channels are still tremendously gate kept. I was at the Reelworld Film Festival, chatting about this with multiple people, and the idea here is that Canadian stories are being told by Canadians, but with the distribution channels are still limited or gate kept so much so that these stories are not seeing the light of day or enough of an audience.
HNMAG: Working in this industry, we have the opportunities to see amazing Canadian projects that most people do not.
Zeynep: Yes. The idea here is to be able to reconstruct these channels. One thing that is helping is that some of the funding, for example through Telus Storyhive, is actually focused on supporting digital. So digital is a really good entry point for a lot of people who either don’t have experience in the film industry, or haven’t been able to tell their stories in the mainstream. But I still feel like, right now, the more Canadian stories can resurface if we’re creating opportunities that make it easier for equity-deserving communities to get a piece of the funding pie. They’re doing this at TelefiIm with a dedicated stream for Indigenous content.
HNMAG: Nice
Zeynep: So, we have to find ways to open up our system so that we can make more room for the stories that do represent the Canadian way of life and it’s not just those diverse dramatic stories, but it’s the stories that are funny, that that make us laugh, and make us laugh-cry. I think there’s space for that, we just have to break down barriers to access and old systems that aren’t working for a lot of us.
HNMAG: What would you like people to take away from this?
Zeynep: Canadian stories are out there and being told, they just need dedicated distribution and funding channels to reach larger audiences – what we have now is great, but we need more of it! When it comes to bringing attention to underheard stories through a uniquely Canadian lens, my mission is to create and produce ten more Hidden Figures movies and ten more Lessons in Chemistry TV shows that fully represent women and gender-diverse folks in science and technology on screen so that we can challenge stereotypes and fuel innovation.
HNMAG: Definitely.
Zeynep: The Women In the Directors Chair (WIDC) program has been a tremendous opportunity to really elevate the voices and tell the stories that need to be told and really urge our partners in the Canadian media system to start spending a lot more time on making these types of stories then finding that funding, helping create that access and breaking down those barriers.
Zeynep Güler-Tuck is a very talented creative producer, writer, and director. She has a strong and passionate vision of culture, diversity, and equality. Zeynep is very grateful for being selected as part of the WIDC program but she is also a very well-deserved participant. We look forward to seeing the content she generates.