Filiz Ahmet

Filiz Ahmet — Biography

Filiz Ahmet is a Skopje-born actress with Macedonian and Turkish citizenship, who became known in Turkey first as Zarife in Elveda Rumeli and then as Nigar Kalfa in Muhteşem Yüzyıl. A stage actress at heart, she won Best Actress at both the Sadri Alışık Awards and the International Dadaş Film Festival in 2014 for Kadın İşi: Banka Soygunu. After offers came in from Turkey she settled in Istanbul.

Theater was close to her from childhood: her grandfather, Lütfü Seyfullah, co-founded the Skopje Turkish Theatre, and she first appeared on stage at six. During the Yugoslav Wars her family went to Sweden, and she returned to Macedonia at fifteen. She studied medicine at secondary school, graduated from the Theatre Department of the Skopje Academy of Fine Arts in 2003 and worked at the Skopje Turkish Theatre. Besides Turkish she speaks Macedonian, Albanian, Swedish, English and Serbian.

Her screen breakthrough came in 2007 with Elveda Rumeli, followed by Galina in Balkan Düğünü. Muhteşem Yüzyıl was shown in 45 countries; she left Nigar Kalfa in a suicide scene. Later came Gülpare in Ruhumun Aynası, Hayat Şarkısı, Mihri in Vurgun and Balkan Ninnisi; on film she appeared in Aşk Tutulması, Sonsuz Aşk, Görevimiz Tatil and Bal Kaymak.