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FAITH IN FATIH
head-on
BEARING UP
Hamburg director Fatih Akin (above) took home the top prize at this year’s Berlin Festival for his fourth feature, Head-On.
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Valentine’s Day was particularly special for the German film industry this year. On Saturday February 14, the Berlin Film Festival’s Jury - headed by American actress Frances McDormand - handed out its prizes. And, for the first time in 18 years, the top award - the Golden Bear - went to a German film.
Not that anyone in Berlin was surprised. Local critics and industry professionals had long tipped Hamburg-born director Fatih Akin for major achievement. He had been successful at the local box office with his last film, Solino, the story of two generations of Italian immigrants in the Ruhr from the sixties to the present day. And, with his new film, Head-On (Gegen die Wand), he had scooped the top prize at Germany’s most prestigious film festival.
Like Solino, Head-On has an immigrant background, too - but not an Italian one. The characters in Akin’s new film - which he wrote as well as directed - have the same background as the director himself: second-generation Turkish.
Like second-generation Asians in the UK and Algerians in France, the Turkish population is now an indistinguishable part of modern Germany - kids and adults for whom Northern Europe, its language, life and climate mean ‘home’. But, thanks to a strong sense of family, the traditions and culture of the homeland still have a major influence, leaving young Turkish Germans frequently torn between two worlds.
The latest German film to attract major international
interest, Fatih Akin’s Head-On got off to a head start by
winning the Golden Bear in Berlin last month. Sam Connolly looks into its distinctive background.
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While their parents see the ‘new’ country as something necessity has forced upon them and still think of Turkey as home, for their children Germany is the only home they know. In Head-On, the younger generation speak German among themselves and Turkish with their parents - a pattern that will be familiar to second-generation immigrants anywhere, from London’s Southall to New York’s Lower East Side. But the fascination of the ‘old’ country lingers, and eventually plays a decisive part in the lives of the film’s protagonists, Cahit and Sibel.
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