Fatih Akın

Fatih Akın
Akin at Cannes with the Golden Bear, May 2008
Born	August 25, 1973 (1973-08-25) (age 36) Hamburg, Germany
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1995 - present

Fatih Akın (born August 25, 1973) is a German film director.

Personal life

Akin was born in Hamburg, Germany, of Turkish descent.^[1][2] He attended Hamburg's College of Fine Arts to study visual communications and graduated in 2000.

Fatih Akın has been married since 2004 to German-Mexican actress Monique Obermüller and currently lives in Hamburg, Germany. His brother Cem Akın is also an actor.

Work

Akın made his debut as director of a full length film as early as 1998 with Short Sharp Shock (Kurz und schmerzlos), which brought him the "Bronze Leopard" award at Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland and the "Pierrot", the Bavarian Film Award for Best New Director in Munich the same year. Since then he has directed feature films such as Im Juli (In July) in 2000, We forgot to go back (Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren) in 2001 and Solino in 2002. His fourth work, Head-On (Gegen die Wand) with Sibel Kekilli as the leading actress was a great success in 2004 and received several prizes, among them the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival and the "Best Film" and the "Audience Award" at the 2004 European Film Awards.

In 2005 he directed a documentary about the Istanbul music scene, named Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, which includes musicians from Ceza to Sezen Aksu to Aynur Doğan and Brenna MacCrimmon. It is narrated by a member of a German experimental band Einstürzende Neubauten, Alexander Hacke, who also produced music for Head-On.

In 2006, he was investigated by German police after wearing a T-Shirt with a Nazi swastika, intending to equate the George W. Bush administration with the Third Reich.

In 2007, Akin's The Edge of Heaven, a German-Turkish cross-cultural tale of loss, mourning and forgiveness, won the prize for best screenplay at the 60th Cannes Film Festival in 2007.^[3][4] On October 24, 2007, the same film was awarded the first edition of the LUX prize for European cinema by the European Parliament.

Themes

In Akın's cinema, the lives of German Turks are a recurring theme. Their struggles and their confusion about two different cultures. In Head-On, two different cultures are presented, the conservative Muslim and Turkish view of Sibel's family, and Sibel's open ideas about sex. Cahit is presented to be somewhat a mixture of these two ideas and cultures, representing a struggling Turk. Akin, on the other hand, has never denied his Turkish roots and even accepted the Cannes award in the name of Turkish cinema.^[5]

Political controversy

Akin has been criticized for actions that have been interpreted by some^[6] as trivializing the Holocaust and was investigated by German police for wearing a T-shirt with a Nazi swastika in place of the letter "S" in the word "BUSH".^[7] Akin defended the T-Shirt as being "more than mere provocation" and emphasized: "Bush's policy is comparable with that of the Third Reich. I think that under Bush, Hollywood has been making certain films at the request of The Pentagon to normalise things like torture and Guantanamo. I'm convinced the Bush administration wants a third world war. I think they're fascists."^[8]

Awards

• 1998 Bavarian Film Awards, Best New Director^[9]
• 2004 Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival
• 2004 European Film Awards, Best Film, Audience Award
• 2007 Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival Golden Orange Award, Best Director
• 2007 Bavarian Film Awards, Best Director^[10]
• 2007 LUX Prize for European Cinema awarded by European Parliament
• 2007 Cannes Film Festival, Best Screenplay

Filmography

References

External links

• Fatih Akın at the Internet Movie Database
• Fatih Akin Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
• Rocking Istanbul A talk with Daniel Bax on the film "Crossing the Bridge", tour guides and Vikings, music divas and the responsibilities of critical acclaim at signandsight.com

Persondata
NAME	Akın, Fatih
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Film director
DATE OF BIRTH	August 25, 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hamburg  Germany
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH