Sami Mermer is a Kurdish filmmaker born in Turkey, living in Montreal, Canada. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, he directed The Box of Lanzo (2006), a documentary about homeless poeple in the US. He also directed a short film called Sortie (2005, winner of campus arts short films competition). Sami was co-writer and assistant director of Ax (The Land, 1999), winner of several prices and best film in Hamburg film festival (Germany, 2000). He worked as a director of photography on several films, such as Taxi Casablanca (2008), that he codirected with Hind Benchekroun and Mary Fowles and that was broadcasted on TV5. He also shot The concert of the voices of Bettina Ehrardt, a documentary about Kent Nagano, and The Passenger, a short fiction film directed with Ben Hoektra. Sami was also an assistant cameraman of the D.O.P Philippe Lavalette on the movie Victoria, directed by Anna Karina. With Hind Benchekroun, he codirected Turtles do not die of old age and was the director of photography of the film. They won the Grand Prize of the International Filmfestival of Tétouan in Morocco. The documentary was also a Jutra nominee and had a mention in Les Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois. The film traveled in a lot of festivals around the world.