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So, give me the lowdown...
65-year-old Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the foremost contemporary Turkish directors and a key figure in the "second wave" of the New Turkish cinema, which emerged in the 1990s. Though his output is relatively sparse – nine features in 27 years – his movies have won a slew of international awards, including a Palme d'Or for 2014's Winter Sleep, and had major retrospectives at the Sarajevo Film Festival, the BFI and MoMA.

What are his films like?
"In my films, the landscapes connect the characters to a sense of something cosmic. I try to recapture those moments in life where you suddenly feel that connection to a wider universe," Ceylan has said of his movies. Expect contemplative, occasionally dialogue-heavy films that feature stunningly photographed Anatolian landscapes and that have a distinctively "literary" feel.

Who are his influences?
Tarkovsky, Bresson, Antonioni, Ozu and Bergman are among Ceylan's most obvious and acknowledged influences. But the intellectually epic, sometimes philosophically wordy nature of his films, and his recurring theme of the frustrations of the "small man", have led many critics to detect strong literary influences, chiefly some of the big hitters: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Ibsen and Dostoyevsky.

What should I start with?
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (2011) is probably the most immediately accessible. Set over one gruelling night, the plot is a shaggy-dog story about a pair of criminals being dragged around the Turkish countryside in search of a body that they were too drunk to remember burying. As the film progresses it reveals itself to be a heartbreaking and absolutely stunningly shot meditation on crime, mortality and innocence.

What's his new one about?
Set in a small town in Ceylan's beloved Anatolia, About Dry Grasses is a drama about a teacher (Deniz Celiloglu) who dreams of moving to Istanbul but is accused of sexual impropriety by a 14-year-old pupil (Ece Bagci). However, this is no ordinary heated melodrama but an elliptical, leisurely meditation on ambiguity, frustrated desire and truth.

Sounds like a critics' darling?
Absolutely. "Another absorbing movie from this unique director who thoroughly deserves his continuing A-list status," said The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "This is Ceylan at his most limber and mischievous, the filmmaking exhibiting a generosity and curiosity that belies the script's defence of individualist, even isolationist, living, at whatever cost to one's own happiness," agreed Variety's Guy Lodge.  Adam Smith