Yilmaz Güney Garden

The Yilmaz Güney Garden sits in the tenth arrondissement of Paris as a tribute to the legendary Kurdish filmmaker, actor, and political activist who spent his final years in exile in the city. The space was named for him in 2017 to honor his immense impact on world cinema and his tireless advocacy for the working class and marginalized communities. Güney famously won the prestigious Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982 for his masterpiece, The Road, a film he co-directed and wrote while imprisoned in Turkey. His life was defined by a constant struggle against state censorship, and he eventually fled to France, where he co-founded the Kurdish Institute of Paris. Today, he rests not far from this garden, buried in the historic Père Lachaise Cemetery.