When Fatih Akin’s In The Fade recently won the best foreign language Golden Globe, there was a lot of chatter on platforms where many people while away most of their waking hours, that one of the more fancied films like Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless or Ruben Östlund’s The Square should have won it. While all the nominees have their own virtues, personally I have a lot of time for Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father , a searing account of the atrocities Cambodia suffered during the Khmer Rouge regime. It did not make it to the Academy Award shortlist, but secured Globe and BAFTA nominations.
But, back to Akin, who is a German filmmaker of Turkish heritage. I missed his feature debut, Short Sharp Shock (1998). I did catch his next one, In July (2000), but I must confess that I watched it solely because of its leading man, Moritz Bleibtreu, who, along with the vibrant Franka Potente, had blown me and the world away in Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998). In July was pleasant enough, but it did not exactly sit me down to write paeans about it. Bleibtreu again was the reason I watched Akin’s gentle family drama, Solino (2002).
At this point, I could take Akin or leave him. Then came Head-On (2004), a visceral tale of two suicidal people who meet at a psychiatric clinic and the events that unfold thereafter. I was not alone in my appreciation of the film. It raked in bushels of international awards, including the Golden Bear at Berlin. If you are one of the few people who have not seen this masterpiece, stop reading and seek it out at once.
After the Olympian heights of Head-On , Akin’s next feature length work was wisely not a fiction feature, but a musical documentary. Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005) takes the viewer through the cultural life of the historic city, with particular emphasis on its diverse music.
Right from Short Sharp Shock, Akin has been an avid chronicler of the Turkey-Germany immigrant experience and this interest comes to the fore in The Edge of Heaven (2007), which is a series of layered journeys, internal and external. It duly won best screenplay at Cannes, amongst tons of other plaudits. The restaurant-set Soul Kitchen (2009) is quite lightweight compared to Akin’s body of work, but Bleibtreu is delightful as an idiosyncratic chef.
The Cut (2014) details the travails of a man who lives through the Armenian genocide during the Ottoman regime, and is a searing, emotionally exhausting piece of work. Perhaps that’s why he followed it up with Goodbye Berlin (2016), a coming-of-age comedy about teenagers on a wacky road trip.
Diane Kruger deservedly won best actress at Cannes for In The Fade , and the film has also made it to the Oscar shortlist. Akin is now adapting Heinz Strunk’s bestselling novel The Golden Glove , about a serial killer who operated in his hometown Hamburg in the first half of the 1970s. We’ll have to wait till 2019 for it. Meanwhile, I’m going to seek out Short Sharp Shock and his 2012 documentary, Garbage in the Garden of Eden, and continue my Akin education.
