In-Conversation with Fatih Akin

The virtuoso director Fatih Akin won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024 with his fourth film, the all-time classic Head-On, making him the last German to win the country’s most prominent movie prize. He is in-conversation at the Red Sea IFF discussing his career from his first short films made in 1995, right up to his latest, Rhinegold, a gangster comedy which is playing at the Festival. To date, Akin has made 11 Feature Films and two documentaries, establishing himself as one of Europe’s leading auteurs. The talk will discuss his unique battles in pursuing a movie career. Born in Hamburg to Turkish parents, Akin’s first feature film, Short Sharp Shock, lived up to its title by showing a Germany that reflected the multiculti contemporary society familiar to the Hamburg-based director. He then took to the road to make In July and Solino before crashing back in Germany with the spectacular Head-On. The film tells the story of a grief-ridden widower who enters a marriage of convenience with a young Turkish-German woman wanting to hide her lifestyle from her parents. From here, Akin explored German-Turkish relations through food (Soul Kitchen) and Music (Crossing the Bridge). But more recently, he’s been churning out blockbuster movies, such as teen comedy Goodbye Berlin, revenge thriller In The Fade and a grotesque serial killer movie, The Golden Glove. It’s quite a career, with Rhinegold the latest brush stroke on his stunning cinematic canvas.