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head-on
YOUNG TURKS
Turkish-born actor Birol Ünel (left) is an established actor in Germany, but his Head-On co-star Sibel Kekilli (next page) was spotted in a Cologne mall.
“ULTIMATELY, IT IS A LOVE
MOVIE - WITH LOVE SEEN NOT
ONLY AS SOMETHING
CONSTRUCTIVE, BUT ALSO AS SOMETHING DESTRUCTIVE”
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Head-On is no comedy about immigrant life, though: it is a raw and uncompromising drama (the original German title literally means ‘Against the Wall’) about an impossible love affair within a Turkish-German setting - indeed probably could not have happened outside it - but which is ultimately about the experience of two people grappling with their emotions, a hostile world and their own sense of identity. Cahit, a 40-year-old rebel played by Akin regular Birol Ünel, and Sibel, a headstrong but much younger girl played by newcomer Sibel Kekilli, travel through a long night together, emerging battered and fundamentally changed on the other side.
“Ultimately,” says Akin, “it is a love movie - with love seen not only as something constructive, but also as something destructive. It also involves death, in the sense of metamorphosis. And it deals with the devil - with the evil that’s within us. I think that love has a dark side as well as a bright side, and that the dark side of love can make us very destructive.”
At the start of the film, Cahit has just been admitted to a psychiatric clinic after attempting to commit suicide by driving his car at full speed into a wall. Sibel, too, has just attempted suicide in an attempt to break free from her conservative Muslim family. But, instead of freedom, the suicide attempt has only brought her shame. Her elderly traditional father all but disowns her; her brother, German on the surface, Turkish underneath, feels mainly anger; only her mother tries to understand. In the end, getting married is the only way to solve Sibel’s dilemma.
So she begs the first Turkish stranger she sees - Cahit - to become her husband. It will be a marriage on paper alone, freeing her from the situation in which her parents have placed her. She and Cahit will share an apartment, she says, but nothing else - they can both go on living their lives as before. In the end, Cahit agrees: he needs to end his old life and start a new one, too, away from drugs and alcohol. And then the impossible happens: Cahit and Sibel start to fall in love. It is something they both fight; and it brings a far from happy ending.
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Next of Akin: The Story So Far
Born in Hamburg to Turkish parents on August 25, 1973, Fatih Akin completed his education at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste - the local art school - before making his first film, the prize-winning short, Sensin’… Du bist es! (Sensin’… You’re the One!), in 1995. Another short, Getürkt (aka Weed), followed a year later, then a feature, Kurz und schmerzlos (Short Sharp Shock), which won a Bronze Leopard at Locarno in 1997.
Feature films
1997 • Kurz und schmerzlos (Short Sharp Shock), the story of three friends - one Turkish, one Greek, one Serbian - trying to make their way in Hamburg’s small-time crime scene
2000 • Im Juli, a romantic road movie about a timid Hamburg teacher who suddenly finds himself heading for Turkey and adventure
2000 • Denk ich an Deutschland - Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren, an autobiographical documentary made for television in which Akin explores his own roots
2002 • Solino, the story, written by Ruth Toma, of a family that moves from the Italian town of the title to Duisburg in the Ruhr, eventually opening an Italian restaurant. The main focus, though, is on their sons - one of whom dreams of becoming a film-maker - who both fall in love with the same woman.
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