Fatih Akin, at 33, made several good films before "Head On," but it was this more intense concoction that put him on the map, winning the top prize at 2004's Berlin Film Festival.
Praised for bringing Germany a long overdue win at Berlin, and in Turkey as a victory for a Turkish filmmaker, Akin comes across as being of both countries and neither.
"I was brought up in a Turkish family living in Hamburg, so I lived sometimes between two worlds," the director says in an interview with The Japan Times. "This experience is something that I wanted to use for the film. I can understand both cultures."