- Born
- Fatih Akin was born in 1973 in Hamburg of Turkish parentage. He began studying Visual Communications at Hamburg's College of Fine Arts in 1994. His collaboration with Wueste Film also dates from this time. In 1995, he wrote and directed his first short feature, "Sensin - You're The One!" ("Sensin - Du bist es!"), which received the Audience Award at the Hamburg International Short Film Festival. His second short film, "Weed" ("Getürkt", 1996), received several national and international festival prizes. His first full length feature film, "Short Sharp Shock" ("Kurz und schmerzlos", 1998) won the Bronze Leopard at Locarno and the Bavarian Film Award (Best Young Director) in 1998. His other films include: "In July" ("Im Juli", 2000), "Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren" (2001), "Solino" (2002), the Berlinale Golden Bear-winner and winner of the German and European Film Awards "Head-On" ("Gegen die Wand", 2003), and "Crossing the Bridge - The Sound of Istanbul" (2005).
- IMDb mini biography by: omayra73@yahoo.com
- SpouseMonique Akin(2004 - present) (2 children)
- RelativesCem Akin(Sibling)
- 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: A Man's Fear of God (2006) (as producer) for Turkey (September 2007).
- In 2005 Fatih Akin was a member of the Official Competition Jury at the 'Cannes International Film Festival'.
- His hobbies include boxing and appearing as 'DJ Superdjango' in clubs.
- 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.
- 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.
- If you love the cinema, you have to love America.
- [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.
- 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.
- [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.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
