Born in Istanbul in 1982, Can Evrenol's earliest memories about storytelling are the scenarios he created with his Kenner's Star Wars toys, Mattel's He-Man, and Hasbro's GI Joe action figures, fuelled by his parents' love for cinema, architecture, renaissance art, and classical music. His father's favorite movie was "2001, A Space Odyssey". His mother's favorite director was Passolini. His favorite bed time story was "The Old Man And The Sea".  At the age of 7, he was in love with his Manowar cassettes, and his Rom The Spaceknight comics. He spent hours watching Conan, Robocop, Goonies, James Bond, Rocky IV endlessly on their beat up Betamax.

 

Evrenol is a proud graduate of Uskudar American Academy, where his literature teacher William Chisholm had a profound influence. He cites the class discussions of such novels as The Lord of The Flies, Catcher In the Rye, A Separate Peace, 1984, The Martian Chronicles, All My Sons, - as well as Peyami Safa, Yakup Kadri, Tarık Dursun K, Sait Faik, Sulhi Dolek - as his earliest education in cinematic narration.

 

Upon graduating from The University of Kent at Canterbury in joint honours; "Art History" and "Film Studies", he attended NYFA in LA, for a brief 8-week filmmaking workshop, where he shot his first short film "Screws / Vidalar", based on a short story by Sulhi Dolek.

 

While making short films as a hobby, he's always been a cult film buff first. His favorite directors were Tarantino, Cronenberg, Lynch, Kubrick, Romero, Fulci, Haneke, Noe, Takashi Miike, Chris Cunningham, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and Demirkubuz. His friendship with fellow cinephiles Yigit Unan, Yesim Tabak, Murat Tolga Sen, Eren Akay and Evrim Ersoy expanded his gusto for the weirdest, rarest and the most diverse films he can get his hands onto.

 

While having no experience in any movie sets, Evrenol toured film festivals around the world with his gung-ho, do-it-all-yourself, b-movie-meets-arthouse short films. 

 

In 2010, he was at Sitges International Film Festival with his award winning short film "To My Mother and Father", where he met Reha Erdem and Omer Atay, who offered him a job as a TVC director at Atlantik Film, in Istanbul. 

 

Through valuable friends he met on Atlantik Film's commercial sets, he made 2 indy horror feature films; "Baskin" (2015) and "Housewife" (2017);

A segment in the horror anthology; "The Field Guide To Evil" (2018);

And a low budget post-apocalyptic kids-on-a-mission movie; "Girl With No Mouth" (2019).

 

His debut film “Baskin” became a mini cult classic, premiering at Toronto International Film Festival's "Midnight Madness" section, winning the Best New Director award at Fantastic Fest, and selling over 40 countries.

 

In 2018, Evrenol was selected as the first ever director to helm a Netflix original series in his home country; "The Protector" with a top-billed cast and amazing crew. Though he had a great time on set, he parted ways after the 1st season due to creative differences.

 

In 2020, he co-wrote (with Merve Gontem) and directed the mini-series "Ciplak", a call girl drama in Istanbul, which turned out to be a controversial underground hit in Turkey. While his movies are most celebrated outside Turkey, Ciplak remains Can Evrenol's most popular and accessible work at home. Following the 1st season which was based on a true story, the 2nd season, titled "Ciplak II", relied on heavy spiritual and fantastic elements, with a dream-logic narrative; a personal favorite of Evrenol's filmography.

 

His first novella, "Mehtap", about a young Turkish woman confronting her esoteric family cult, is published in 2022; followed by his spiritual sci-fi story "Omega Vatan", the same year. In 2024, his short story collection “Annemi Öldürdüğüm Hikayeler / Stories Where I Kill My Mom" was published.

 

He returned to his midnight cinema roots with his ultra-violent anti-revenge flick, Sayara (2024) which combined psycho-sexual elements with grappling martial arts, produced by Inter Medya.

 

Evrenol is based in Istanbul, married to Elif Domanic and has 2 sons; Uzay and Mars - who dress in Batman and Spiderman costumes all day.

 

He’s recently purple belt in jiujitsu.