Search

Mehmet Aktaş

Birth : , Iğdır, Turkey

History

Mehmet Aktaş is a Kurdish filmmaker, producer, author and journalist born in Turkey but living in Germany. He is founder and chief executive of the film production and distribution company mîtosfilm in Berlin. In the middle of the 1990s Aktaş came to Germany after he had finished his studies at law school in Istanbul. In Germany he was wondering because as well the German people as the institutions disregarded Near Eastern cinema, especially the Kurdish cinema. Therefore, he founded the first Kurdish Film Festival in Germany in 2002 which has been supported by the "Hauptstadtkulturfonds". With Mîtosfilm Aktaş produced feature films like Close up Kurdistan (2007) directed by Yüksel Yavuz, Land of Legend (2008) directed by Rahim Zabihi, and Après la Chute (2009) directed by Hiner Saleem. In 2009 Mehmet Aktaş was successful as producer of No One knows about Persian Cats directed by Bahman Ghobadi which was honored at the Film Festival Cannes with the award Un Certain Regard. Mîtosfilm also functions as filmdistribution, focusing on new Turkish, Kurdish, Iraqi and Iranian auteur cinema. Since 2004 Mîtosfilm has also released films in German cinemas: Turtles can fly (2004), Two Girls from Istanbul (2005), Süt (2008) and Min dît (2010). These films illustrate Aktaş' political aspiration of giving a more authentic image of the life in the Near East than the local news. Mehmet Aktaş also wrote the screenplay for Hisham Zaman's second feature film Letter to the King (2014) which received the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at Goteborg Film Festival 2014. Mîtosfilm's latest production Memories on Stone (2014) directed by Shawkat Amin Korki and written by Mehmet Aktaş and Korki was awarded at Abu Dhabi Film Festival 2014 as Best Film from the Arab World. Korki won the prize as "Best Director" at Cinedays Skopje – 13th Festival of European Film. "Memories on Stone" was released in Swiss cinema-theaters by the prestigious distributor Trigon Film in November 2014. Since 2011 Aktaş is also artistic director for the Duhok International Film Festival.

Movies

In the Blind Spot

In the Blind Spot

Producer

A German film team is shooting a documentary in northeastern Turkey. In a remote Kurdish village, they witness an elderly women performing a recurring ritual to keep the memory of her missing son alive. The Kurdish translator of the German crew is also the nanny of Melek, a 7–year–old turkish girl. Her father, Zafer, works for a sinister organization and is caught between loyalty to them and and fear for his family's well being when his daughter appears to be haunted by a mysterious force. The fateful encounter of these people developes a destructive power. IN THE BLIND SPOT unravels a complex net of conspiracy, paranoia and generational trauma.

Producer

Rojin is a young Kurdish-Iraqi woman about to take the university entrance exam. Rojin's unhappily married older sister Shilan decides to help her pass at any cost, hoping to give her a more emancipated life. Thus, the sisters inevitably become entangled in a huge network of corruption that connects all parts of society.

The Legend of the Ugly King

The Legend of the Ugly King

Producer

Director Hüseyin Tabak explores the legacy of Yilmaz Güney — political dissident, convicted murderer, and visionary Kurdish filmmaker — who directed the 1982 Palme d'Or–winning Yol from inside prison and died in exile just two years later.

Das Milan-Protokoll

Das Milan-Protokoll

Producer

Co-Producer

Eylem is a young woman. She lives in a small Kurdish town and works at a rug workshop. She thinks her nose is too large, and dreams of having cosmetic surgery. However, one of her brothers has joined the political organization, and many others from the same town have died in clashes. Will Eylem manage to find a way out of this challenging dilemma?

Reseba: The Dark Wind

Reseba: The Dark Wind

Writer

Radical Islamist militants attack a village in Iraq where a young Yazidi love couple prepares for marriage. From that moment onwards their lives are turned into a nightmare.

Memories on Stone

Memories on Stone

Screenplay

Kurdish childhood friends Hussein and Alan want to produce a film about the genocide of Kurdish people in Iraq, the Anfal campaign in 1988. They learn that, to achieve veracity by the means of cinema and to face their own identity, it's worth putting everything on the line - even their own life.

Memories on Stone

Memories on Stone

Producer

Kurdish childhood friends Hussein and Alan want to produce a film about the genocide of Kurdish people in Iraq, the Anfal campaign in 1988. They learn that, to achieve veracity by the means of cinema and to face their own identity, it's worth putting everything on the line - even their own life.

Letter to the King

Letter to the King

Script

In Letter to the King we meet a group of refugees, all with their own agendas, on an excursion to Oslo. A young man about to be deported visits his former employers to collect his off-the-books salary, a martial arts expert is looking for work, a young woman is haunted by the past and out for vengeance and an old man named Mirza is busy writing a letter to the king to get his final wish granted. An altogether urgent and nuanced portrait of a motley group of individuals, too often regarded as a homogeneous group.

No One Knows About Persian Cats

No One Knows About Persian Cats

Co-Producer

Iranian musicians Negar and Ashkan look for band members to play at a London concert ... and the visa that allows them to leave Tehran to do so.

Producer

This documentary shows us how a Daf elaborated. It's about a family that all their children are blinded and they're running their family business. They're making Dafs which is an Iranian hand percussion musical instrument and nowadays it's mostly played in Kurdish folk songs.