Pelin Esmer was born and grew up in Istanbul. After she majored in sociology in Istanbul, she attended the cinema workshop of the Turkish director Yavuz Ozkan. She worked as a first assistant director in a number of Turkish and foreign projects, including documentaries, features and commercials. She gave lectures about documentary film-making at Istanbul Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

She founded her own film company, Sinefilm, in 2005 and currently produces her own projects as an independent director and producer together with her producer colleagues Tolga Esmer and Nida Karabol Akdeniz.