Fatih Akin Komentari
NOT GOING OUT IN THE FIRST ROUND
I put so much into the making of HEAD-ON (GEGEN DIE WAND), that when I finished, I had
no idea what to do next. On my previous films, I had always known what I was doing next
before finishing the current one. So there I was in this bad situation not knowing what
to do. Ironically, to make matters worse, HEAD-ON became a big success for me. I wasn’t
expecting it. As great as it was, success doesn’t make everything easier. I got even more
blocked. I felt pressured to come up with something better than HEAD-ON. I wanted to
do better artistically. I had to prove to myself that HEAD-ON wasn’t the best I could do.
I relate a lot of things to sports, so I kept thinking that I didn’t want to go out in the first
round. I was faced with the challenge of following up HEAD-ON. Being faster than
Carl Lewis. Being Ben Johnson.
MY HOMEWORK
Filmmaking is a big part of my life, but it pales next to issues like birth, love and death.
To really grow up, I felt I had to make three films. Call it a trilogy if you want to, but it’s
basically three films that belong together because of their themes of love, death and evil.
HEAD-ON was about love. THE EDGE OF HEAVEN is about death. Death in the sense of every
death is a birth. Like both death and birth open doors to other dimensions. With THE EDGE
OF HEAVEN, I feel like I’m reaching some other level, but something is still missing that
will be in the third film about evil. I just feel like I have to tell something to the end. These
three films are kind of my homework, then I can move on. Maybe move on to genre films,
film noir, western, even horror.
IN BETWEEN TWO CULTURES
I have this Turkish background and I have this German background. I was born in
Germany, but I’m in between the two cultures. Educated in Europe, but also raised in
Turkish by my parents. Turkish culture has always been a part of my life. I traveled to
Turkey with my family every summer since I was a kid. Since I’m in between these two
cultures, it’s natural that my films are in between, too.
LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH TURKEY
I have this love-hate relationship with Turkey, a very complicated relationship. I became
much more interested in Turkey after I finished school in 1995. I decided to make my first
short film there, WEED in 1996. I saw another face of Turkey and I became more and
more fascinated. I became more Turkish. With every meter of film I shoot in Turkey, I try
to understand the country more and more. But the more I understand it, the more it makes
me sad. I hate the politics, the nationalism. Look at what is happening in that country.
History repeating itself. The same mistakes again and again. I love that country, but shooting
in Turkey takes a lot of energy, tears and blood.
EDUCATION CAN SAVE THE WORLD
Literacy, education, plays a profound role in THE EDGE OF HEAVEN. A book is a key image
in the conflict between Nejat and his father. Which book to show? It was a very difficult
decision for me. I didn’t want “Siddartha” or “The Hobbit” or anything too full of some
parallel meaning. So I thought I would advertise my friend’s fantastic book. I chose “Die
Tochter des Schmieds (The Blacksmith’s Daughter)” by Selim Ozdogan. In regards to the
film, the key element is about reading. Reading stands for education. And education is
the only thing that can save the world.
HANNA AND TUNCEL
I imagined this German mother coming to Istanbul looking for her missing daughter.
I had this image early on with Hanna Schygulla in mind. I had met her in Belgrade in 2004
and she put a spell on me. I was really into the idea of working with her. Some German
journalists have compared my career to that of Fassbinder’s, but I don’t see it at all.
I come from the streets, not the theater. Yilmaz Güney is more my background, independent
against the norm. What Fassbinder was to Hanna, Güney was similar to actor Tuncel
Kurtiz, who I also imagined early on to be part of THE EDGE OF HEAVEN. But my goal wasn’t
to use them as icons from films by Fassbinder and Güney. It would have been vain of me
to try and use them like no one else before. I didn’t want my direction to be affected
like that. For me, my job is storytelling. And both Hanna and Tuncel fit the idea I had for
the parents in the story.
SAMPLING
The challenge for me as a filmmaker is not to repeat myself. I like to surprise myself and
ultimately the audience. I hope that all my films will seem different. I guess we’ll be able
to judge that five films from now. When my ideas come, they all come at the same time
and they come from a lot of different sources. I even recyle, like sampling in hip hop
music, which I love. They use known bass lines to create something new from something
old, and it’s a sort of homage at the same time. Some of the issues in THE EDGE OF HEAVEN
were sampled from CROSSING THE BRIDGE. The character of the political activist Ayten
was inspired by those Kurdish singers. Here in the West, we don’t have to fight for freedom
of speech. But the war for justice is still going on in Turkey.