E. Kutlug Ataman was born in Istanbul and studied at film schools in Paris and Los Angeles where he graduated with the short La Fuga. E. Kutlug Ataman then directed his first full-length feature Serpent's Tale which won prizes at several international film festivals. He is now living in Istanbul again and has become one of the leading lights in the Turkish gay liberation movement. His weekly column in the newspaper Gazete Pazar had been an important outlet for the gay community. At the Biennale in Istanbul, he presented a documentary on Semiha Berksoy, the first Turkish opera singer who trained in Berlin in the 1930s and is a living legend in Istanbul today at the age of 92. Kutlug Ataman shot Lola + Bilidikid on location in Berlin in winter 1997.
