Fatih Akin was born in 1973 in Hamburg. He is Turkish. He studied Visual Communications at Hamburg's College of Fine Arts in 1994. By this time he started collaborating with Wueste Film. In 1995, he wrote and directed his first short feature, Sensin - You're The One! (Sensin - Du bist es!), which received the Audience Award at the Hamburg International Short Film Festival. His second short film, Weed (Getuerkt, 1996), received several national and international festival prizes. His first full length feature film, Short Sharp Shock (Kurz und schmerzlos, 1998) won the Bronze Leopard at Locarno and the Bavarian Film Award (Best Young Director) in 1998. His other films include: In July (Im Juli, 2000), Wir haben vergessen zurueckzukehren (2001), Solino (2002), and Head-On (Gegen die Wand, 2003). This movie provoked a great scandal when it was made public that the star had been a porno actress.

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