Timelines

Fatih Akin's film “Head-On”, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2004, tells the story of two people who “drift between self-destruction and a hunger for life, inner turmoil and self-discovery”: After Cahit agrees to a sham marriage with Sibel, Sibel learns at the registry office that Cahit is a widower. When she later asks him about his deceased wife, an argument breaks out and he throws her out of the apartment.  What follows is a stormy game between newfound freedom, jealousy, and painful love, which takes a dramatic turn when Cahit kills Sibel's lover. With “Head-On”, Akin chose a screenplay that ties in with the milieu of his debut film Short and Painless (1998): the story of a friendship between three young men* from Hamburg with different migration backgrounds. Migrants also play the leading roles in “Head-On” and Akin's subsequent films. However, instead of portraying them as victims of their migration history, their realities are told from their own perspectives. Fatih Akin's films can thus be seen as creative forms of resistance in a film industry dominated by white people.