Do we like them?

Do we like Fatih Akin?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful found in his words or company, plus real courage on speaking out, but I couldn't open the full articles, so the record is thinner than I'd like.

Fatih Akin is the Hamburg-born son of Turkish parents who became one of Germany's best-known directors. His breakthrough was Head-On, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin festival in 2004, and his films keep returning to the lives of people between two cultures.

He has made a habit of saying the uncomfortable thing. At Cannes in 2025 he said he feared ending up behind bars if he returned to Turkey, because his manager there is jailed and accused of trying to overthrow the government. He called Turkey's leaders “mobsters”, and that sort of talk costs you at home.

The recent work is Ghost Song, a Hamburg-set supernatural love story, and his earlier Amrum, which played at Cannes. Nothing in his recent projects ties him to anyone pushing harm that I could find, though I couldn't check every co-producer.

The good stuff is mostly the work itself: films that put immigrant and outsider stories at the centre of German cinema, plus a Golden Globe for In the Fade and a Golden Camera from the Košice festival in June 2026. I didn't find a big charity record, and I won't make one up.

So the verdict stands: a filmmaker with a clean sheet in what I could see, a spine when it counts, and a new film in cinemas now. The caveat is the thin sourcing, since several news sites wouldn't open for me.