Esra Saydam is an Istanbul-born filmmaker and a European Film Academy member with an M.F.A. in Film from Columbia University in New York City. Her films explore themes of love and guilt with characters stuck in between. Her directorial works include Öte (2023, Tribeca Film Festival) and Across the Sea (2014), which won multiple awards at the Slamdance, Milano, and Adana film festivals, and screened at Warsaw, Istanbul, and Raindance. Her projects in development have been supported by EAVE, Sundance, Content London, IFP/Gotham, Trans Atlantic Partners, Hamptons, IFF@TIFF and Cine Qua Non Lab. She has participated in Berlinale Talents and Sarajevo CineLink, received fellowships from SAGindie, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and was nominated for the Nora Ephron Prize at Tribeca. Her current projects in development are The Mesopotamian (co-written with the Cannes Competition director/writer Ramata Sy) and Dante, 0. Esra founded the New York-based Sand & Snow Films and its sister company, Karlakum Film in Istanbul, and teaches filmmaking at universities in both cities.

Dante, 0 — When a trip home to Istanbul turns new mother Ceyda into an international child abductor, she must battle her not-so-innocent ex, European family law, and her unraveling postpartum mind — guided only by a medieval Italian poet who never agreed to be her Virgil.