Director hopes Berlin award will help spread film’s message

A low-budget German production that won the Berlin Film Festival’s top Golden Bear award was added to the competition at the last minute, leaving its Turkish-born director stunned by its improbable success.

Fatih Akin said in an interview he hoped the film “Head-On” (“Gegen die Wand”), which won the Berlinale’s best film award on Saturday, will help the integration of Turks in Germany four decades after millions of “guest workers” started coming here.

“It is just great, simply grand,” Akin said. “I didn’t have any hopes that the film would win the Golden Bear.”

Germany has 82 million people, about two million of them Turks. Many live in ethnic neighborhoods, and in most parts of the country Turks are only partially integrated with their German neighbors.

But Akin’s film casts above all a critical eye at steps some Turks take to thwart assimilation, a theme that surfaced in other Berlinale films.

In “Head-On,” a young Turkish woman in Hamburg, played by first-time actress Sibel Kekilli, is trying to break free from her traditional and strictly Muslim home. She’s already tried to kill herself once and has been beaten by her brother.

She enters a fake marriage after convincing an older, depressed German-born Turk with alcohol problems to marry her. They share a loveless flat.

But as the woman enjoys newfound freedoms, her mate begins to fall in love with her, causing serious problems. She eventually falls in love with him as well.

“I wanted to make a film that shows a love story between people on the outer edge of society,” said Akin. “A film about people who are willing to inflict pain upon themselves just to show that ‘Yes, I’m alive.’ ”

Akin said he hoped his film -- due out in German cinemas in April -- would provoke some new thinking in Germany’s Turkish community.