Cem Özay was born in 1983 in Gaziantep province of Turkey. He discontinued his education and started working as assistant editor at local news agencies.

After taking up filmmaking Özay became involved in film industry in 2003. He worked as an assistant, location manager, production manager, line production in TV serial and film projects.

Özay decided to continue with his journey in film industry as an author and director and made his debut as a director with his short film Passenger.

Özay has been recently working on project development and funding of his first feature film "Forgiveness" a project that has been qualified to receive funding support from the General Directorate of Cinema of Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.