Four films by Fatih Akin – In the Cut, Soul Kitchen, Head On & Edge of Heaven
Happy birthday Fatih Akin –
“The funnier it is in the beginning of a story, the more dramatic it can become. Because when an audience is laughing, that’s opening their souls somehow, and when you have an audience with an open soul, it’s much better to hit them with a knife.” MUBI/Fatih Akin
Tahar Rahim the actor here watching Charlie Chaplin film “The Kid” for the first time – a scene from “In the Cut”
The film stars the French-Algerian actor Tahar Rahim (“A Prophet”) as an Armenian blacksmith who travels around the world — from Aleppo to Havana to North Dakota — in search of his two daughters, with whom he lost touch after the outbreak of systematic violence that would eventually claim the lives of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.
Fatih Akin 
Fatih Akin talks about Soul Kitchen
Commencing with his own personal inspirations, he referred to Bruce Lee as a key formative influence, although he admitted that he hadn’t yet made a film in direct tribute to Lee.
For his first major international breakthrough, “Head On” – that won the Berlinale Golden Bear in 2004 – he says that he was inspired by Soderbergh’s “Traffic,” especially in terms of the freedom of camera work, and by Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves.”Another key influence for “Head On” was Patrice Chereau’s “Intimacy.” Akin wanted to explore the boundaries of showing sex -scenes in the context of a hard-hitting drama and wanted a Turkish female lead, but this proved to be difficult because of the nude scenes. He ultimately cast former adult film actress Sibel Kekilli.
“I have to fall in love with my actors,” he said. “Filmmaking is a war, a holy war. It’s my own private jihad. When you’re in a war, you’re in the trenches. You create a brotherhood and you depend on each other for your lives.”
Head On – Strategies of Representation in Fatih Akin’s Head on
Roger Ebert – review of Edge of Heaven here .