His father worked in a dry cleaning company, his mother was an elementary school teacher.
Fatih Akin (born 25 August 1973) is a German film director, screenwriter and producer. His better-known films include Head-On, which won the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival, and The Edge of Heaven, which won the Prix du Jury at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
Akin was born in Hamburg, Germany, to a Turkish father and a German mother. He has two sisters, one older and one younger. His parents divorced when he was eight years old, and he was raised by his mother.
Akin attended high school in Hamburg-Altona. He then studied Visual Communications at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences from 1994 to 1999.
Akin’s first feature film was Short Sharp Shock (1998), which he co-wrote and co-directed with his friend Züli Aladag. The film won the Max Ophüls Prize at the 1999 Saarbrücken Film Festival.
Akin’s next film was Head-On (2004), a controversial love story about a Turkish man and a German woman who are both in love with someone else. The film won the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival.
Akin’s third film was The Edge of Heaven (2007), a drama about a Turkish man who goes to Germany to find his son, and a German woman who goes to Turkey to find her daughter. The film won the Prix du Jury at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
Akin has also directed several music videos, including Rammstein’s “Mein Teil” (2004) and Tarkan’s “Bounce” (2007).
Akin is married to German actress Monique Obermüller. They have two sons, born in 2007 and 2009.
General Info
Full Name
Fatih Akin
Profession
Actor, Film director, Film producer, Screenwriter
Education
University of Fine Arts of Hamburg
Family
Spouse
Monique Akın
Children
Emin Akın
Parents
Mustafa Enver Akin, Hadiye Akin
Siblings
Cem Akın
Accomplishments
Awards
Golden Bear, Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay, Grand Jury Prize, German Film Award for Best Feature Film, German Film Award for Best Direction, Goya Award for Best European Film, European Film Award for Best Screenwriter, German Film Award for Best Screenplay, Golden Orange Award for B...
Nominations
Golden Lion, European Film Award for Best Film, Palme d'Or, European Film Award for Best Director, César Award for Best Foreign Film, Best Screenplay Award, People's Choice Award for Best European Film, Silver Lion for Best Director, David di Donatello for Best European Film, Independent Spirit Awa...
Movies
Head-On, The Edge of Heaven, Soul Kitchen, The Cut, Goodbye Berlin, Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, In July, Solino, Short Sharp Shock, New York, I Love You, In the Fade, Polluting Paradise, Kebab Connection, Getürkt, Visions of Europe, Chiko, Deutschland 09 - 13 kurze Filme zur Lage de...
All my films are very personal. They're auteur films, in a way. I'm the scriptwriter, I'm producing it, and I'm the director. Soul Kitchen (2009) is more like a diary. The other films were really more like my reflections about the world and my issues. I want to change the world. I want to make it a better world, whatever that means. Soul Kitchen is very liberated from these things. It has other problems; it has other issues. It is like a diary. I was in those clubs; I was carrying this drunken woman home. We always had the temptation, because these people were so beautiful, but they were drunk. I was not stealing turntables, because they were too heavy, but I was stealing records at a time before I could afford them. A lot of the world in the film is really much about the filmmaking. I don't think I will ever do a film about filmmaking. I think it's too boring; there's a lot of insider stuff. The best film about filmmaking, I think, is Day for Night (1973) by François Truffaut, and 8½ (1963). There's nothing to add, I think. They told it how it is. I could really use the world of the restaurant as a symbol for the filmmaking. The chef is really much like a director, cooking and improvising. The owner of a restaurant is really much like the producer of a film. The customers are like the audiences; the dishes are like films. You even have film critics with the critics of the restaurant. It was really an opportunity to do a film about filmmaking. It went so far that I was wondering what Adam [Bousdoukos] was acting as, and I was asking him, "What are you doing there?" and he said, "I'm imitating you, man. That's you."
2
[on informing the Turkish audience about the historic Armenian Genocide through The Cut (2014)] I believe in that. Certain people may not need it. But other people need another rhetoric to understand this, I don't want to be preachy or act as a teacher but I want to create empathy. I made the film so that the Turkish audience could identify with an Armenian hero, which isn't easy. To do this you have to keep it simple and not challenge the audience with too much intellectual attitudes, but challenge them emotionally.
3
[on the message of The Cut (2014):] I come from a religious family, with strict dogmas and it took a while to get rid of them. I now have my own definition of what is right and wrong, good and evil. You can say I'm a spiritual person. The film is about that: Someone losing his religion but getting the sense of spirituality.
4
[on his inspirations for The Cut (2014)] Elia Kazan's America America (1963), certain aesthetics of the cinematography, as well as shooting the film in English and naturally the long voyage of the young man through the impoverished towns and villages on the way to Constantinople. (...) I had Westerns in my mind to inspire me, The Searchers (1956) by John Ford, and also Homer's 'The Odyssey' certainly was a reference for me: The journey of the hero who tries to return to his family.
5
Growing my audience is a target of mine. Cinema is a collective experience. Many people sit together, there's a lot of seats, and you want those seats to be filling up. I'm not that egotistic, to say, "No, I only want to do a film for me, I don't care." That's not true. For sure I do them for me, but I hope I can share it with as many people as possible.
6
[on Rainer Werner Fassbinder] Comparisons with Fassbinder have followed me around since my first film, Short Sharp Shock (1998). Critics said that the character Gabriel, who emerges from prison determined never to return to crime, reminded them of Franz Biberkopf in Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980). It's funny, because I hadn't even seen the film at the time. I admire Fassbinder, but he and I work in different ways. Hanna Schygulla once told me that Fassbinder forced his actors never to deviate from the script. But in my films everyone can do as he or she wishes. I like it when actors depart from the script to find their characters. Of course, that's also why it takes me three years to make a movie. Fassbinder would have been able to turn out 10 films in that amount of time.
7
If you love the cinema, you have to love America.
8
What I'm always trying to say is, this Turkish-German gap, you know, or this connecting element of the two nations, or systems, or worlds - you can change that and put other things instead. Mexico and the U.S., same thing.
Facts
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Fact
1
Fatih Akin and his wife Monique, who is of German-Mexican descent, live together with their two children (born 2005 and 2011) in Hamburg-Altona (Germany), where he was born. [August 2014]
2
He visited Argentina to promote his film Soul Kitchen (2009) in Buenos Aires. [November 2009]
3
Started writing short stories and scripts in his youth.
4
His father worked in a dry cleaning company, his mother was an elementary school teacher.
5
Fatih Akin studied 'Visual Communication' at Hamburg's 'College of Fine Arts (Hochschule der Bildenden Künste)' from 1994 to 2000. He never went to a conventional film school.
6
Two of his films were submitted for the Best Foreign Langugage Film category of The 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008): The Edge of Heaven (2007) (as director, writer and producer) for Germany and Takva (2006) (as producer) for Turkey (September 2007).
7
His hobbies include boxing and appearing as 'DJ Superdjango' in clubs.
