{"id":3115,"date":"2026-04-08T19:11:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/3115\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T19:11:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:11:14","slug":"fatih-akin-made-amrum-as-a-favor-it-became-a-hit-in-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/3115\/","title":{"rendered":"Fatih Akin Made ‘Amrum’ as a Favor. It Became a Hit in Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

An established German\/Turkish auteur based in Hamburg, Fatih Akin<\/a> has always subverted the conventions of narrative storytelling, from his early films \u201cHead-On\u201d and \u201cCrossing the Bridge\u201d to Cannes prize-winner \u201cThe Edge of Heaven.\u201d This year, his Cannes premiere \u201cAmrum\u201d<\/a> surprised everyone, possibly including festival director Thierry Fr\u00e9maux, who did not give Akin his usual competition slot. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m at the festival, I have that Palme on the poster,\u201d said Akin on Zoom from Hamburg. He had the last laugh when \u201cAmrum<\/a>\u201d proved an $8-million box-office hit in Germany. (Akin is already in post-production on a new film<\/a>, \u201cGhost Song,\u201d which he is aiming to complete in time for Cannes. \u201cIt\u2019s a tragic love story,\u201d he said, \u201cand it\u2019s arthouse for teenagers.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"Steven<\/a> \"Jaafar<\/a> <\/p>\n

Set in the last year of World War II on the remote North Sea island of Amrum, the story is told from the point of view of 12-year-old Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck), whose zealot mother (Laura Tonke) is raising him as a good Nazi while his father fights in the war. When his mother falls into postpartum depression, exacerbated by the death of Hitler, Nanning sets out to cheer her up by making her favorite food: white bread, butter, and honey. His island hunt to find the needed ingredients turns into a hero\u2019s quest.<\/p>\n

Anyone who knows Akin\u2019s work will instantly recognize that the movie is shot with a spare, classic aesthetic distinct from his usual thrumming style. That\u2019s because Akin was initially set to produce the film for his old friend, Hamburg\u2019s German New Wave and Rainer Werner Fassbinder veteran (and octogenarian professor) Hark Bohm, whose experience as a judge helped Akin co-write \u201cIn the Fade,\u201d which earned Diane Kruger<\/a> Best Actress at Cannes 2017. <\/p>\n

But when Bohm fell ill, Akin first co-wrote the story based on Bohm\u2019s childhood memories in Amrum, and then agreed to take over the movie altogether. Sadly, Bohm died in November, 2025.<\/p>\n

At first, Akin planned to change his entire aesthetic to honor his friend. \u201cWhat am I doing here?\u201d he thought. \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about this world. I don\u2019t know how these people eat their cake and how they drink their coffee. And, I know nothing about the countryside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, Akin said, \u201c\u2018OK, this is not me. But he asked me to do it, and I accepted.’\u201d He studied Bohm\u2019s body of work, shot by shot. But three weeks before production, the director realized, \u201cThis is wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cI should not do it the way he would do it. I should do this film the way I would do it. I try with each film to do it different. Sometimes it succeeds. Sometimes not.\u201d<\/p>\n

So he went ahead and made \u201cA Hark Bohm Film by Fatih Akin.\u201d He admired the post-war Neorealism films, from Vittorio de Sica\u2019s \u201cBicycle Thieves\u201d to Roberto Rossellini\u2019s \u201cGermany: Year One,\u201d he said. \u201cI had the chance to make it as simple and powerful as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his Turkish background \u2014 his parents immigrated to Germany in the \u201960s before he was born \u2014 Akin can watch German society from a bit of a remove. \u201cAmrum\u201d became a sleeper hit in Germany, grossing more than $8 million. (More countries are still opening the film.) \u201cThe film was an event,\u201d he said. \u201cIt hit a nerve here. I think it was because of the rise of the far right, which we\u2019re dealing with in Germany. This is serious, in a way. The Second World War, Nazi Germany, it\u2019s still a trauma we have not overcome, not at all. This de-Nazification program of the Americans, la, la, la, la. That didn\u2019t work. The cinema, in this particular case, works as a therapy session for society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DianeDiane Kruger in \u2018Amrum\u2019Kino Lorber<\/p>\n

In Germany, \u201cthere was no resistance,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was not like in Italy. I\u2019m not saying that they were all Nazis, but the majority supported the regime, and later on, the majority was quiet and accepted, maybe because of fear, maybe because they believed in the Nazi thing. But they all have this connection to that. Maybe someone other than me, maybe Christian Petzoldt<\/a>, would have another approach to that because of the guilt. What I personally believe: It\u2019s not what Germans did to the Jews, it\u2019s what humans did to other humans. So that makes me connect to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carrying the movie is Jasper Billerbeck, whom Akin\u2019s casting director found at a sailing school. \u201cWe were looking for kids who were not afraid of nature,\u201d he said. \u201cMost of the kids from the big cities where most of the acting children are, they see a spider, they go crazy.\u201d <\/p>\n

One reason Akin went for Billerbeck: his poker face. \u201cThis other kid in the film, his best friend, you see the kid, and you like him right away. My kid could not be like this, sympathetic at first sight. He\u2019s a child of Nazis. We cannot like him immediately. We have to make it a bit difficult for the audience, or difficult for him that the audience like him. And that kid reminded me of Hark\u2019s face. His face is not commenting [on] something. He doesn\u2019t have to act sad or fun; his face reflects whatever the film editing around him explains to us. That\u2019s the value of that face. You can interpret anything into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'Amrum'\"\u2018Amrum\u2019Kino Lorber<\/p>\n

Another film that influenced his handling of the child protagonists was Rob Reiner\u2019s \u201cStand by Me,\u201d which Akin first saw when he was 12. \u201cRob Reiner took the kids seriously. He put the camera on the eye line of the kids, and he was one of the kids. He didn\u2019t look from up down to the kids. He was treating them like adults. That approach was something I had in mind. So I tried to stay with the camera on the same eye line as the kid. I never wanted to treat the kid as a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akin tapped his old friend Diane Kruger when she offered help if he needed it. \u201cIt was difficult to finance the film,\u201d he said. \u201cI sent her the screenplay: \u2018Choose whatever you want to play.\u2019 I expected her to play the mother or the aunt, but she said, \u2018I would like to do that farmer.\u2019 Because her aunt was a farmer like that character. I asked her to learn [local dialect] Frisian.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cAmrum,\u201d Akin leaned into the beauty of the rugged seaside landscape, drawing inspiration from 19th-century painter Caspar David Friedrich. \u201cIt was a way of treating nature with humbleness,\u201d said Akin. \u201cThe idea of romanticism at that time was to go back to nature. Because it was the rise of the industrialization, suddenly, steam factories were rising, technology was rising, and there was this desire in some of the artists to like nature. Is this not happening today, too, with all this artificial intelligence? That\u2019s why I studied those paintings, which are idealizing nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, this movie found Akin. He didn\u2019t find it. \u201cIt came from outside,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve rediscovered simplicity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kino Lorber opens \u201cAmrum\u201d in theaters on April 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An established German\/Turkish auteur based in Hamburg, Fatih Akin has always subverted the conventions of narrative storytelling, from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3264,3265,1007,1238,5,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-3115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-amrum","9":"tag-diane-kruger","10":"tag-fatih-akin","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-interviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}