Reis Çelik was born in Ardahan, north-east Anatolia, in 1961. At the age of 14 he moved to Istanbul, where he later studied music and theatre at the State Conservatoire.
He began a career in journalism and photography in 1982 and within a few years was also making documentary films and commercials.
With the arrival of private television in Turkey in the early 1990s he began designing and directing programmes for the channel ATV, which he also helped to set up. He left the media in the mid-1990s to concentrate on film-making.