Mustafa Preşeva

Mustafa Preşeva — Biography

Film editor and actor Mustafa Preşeva, who is of Albanian descent, was born on 11 October 1961 in Mitrovica, then part of Yugoslavia and now in Kosovo. Mechanical engineering at Belgrade Technical University came first; he then trained in film editing at Belgrade's Faculty of Dramatic Arts, and from 1983 editing was his main work. It brought him a Golden Medal at the Belgrade Short Film and Documentary Festival in 1986 for the short film Dying Woods, and in 1989 the Pula Film Festival named him Editor of the Year for The Fall of Rock and Roll.

He settled in Istanbul in 1992 during the Yugoslav Wars, and went on to win the Golden Orange for best editing three times at the Antalya festival, for Tabutta Rövaşata (1996), Filler ve Çimen (2001) and Vicdan (2008), plus two further editing awards in the same year, 2005, at the Ankara International Film Festival for Karpuz Kabuğundan Gemiler Yapmak and Neredesin Firuze. His editing credits include Vizontele, G.O.R.A., Organize İşler, Ayla and Müslüm; he played an Italian priest in the 2001 film The Accidental Spy, and, owing to his resemblance to Atatürk, played him in two television commercials, in 1997 and 2010.

He has taught film editing at Koç, Bilgi, Bilkent and Kadir Has universities, also taught sound design at Bilgi for a time, and is involved in music alongside his film work.