Fatih Akin's new comedy lands prize at Venice film festival

Multiple prize-winning German-Turkish film director Fatih Akin added another prize to his growing collection by walking off with the Special Jury award at the Venice film festival for his comedy "Soul Kitchen. Two other competition entries with German participation also received honors at the awards ceremony on Sunday evening.

Filming Soul kitchen, Photo: Corazon int. press.

Fatih Akin is known for his dramas, in particular for Head On (Berlinale Golden Bear, 2004) and The Edge of Heaven (Cannes Screenplay award, 2007). Yet in Soul Kitchen he entered unfamiliar territory and switched genres to write and direct a comedy set in a restaurant in his home city of Hamburg.

In Akin’s latest film, German-Greek restaurant owner Zinos is down on his luck. His girlfriend has left to move to Shanghai for a new job and he is suffering from chronic back pains. To make matters worse his idea of making his restaurant more up-market by hiring a new gourmet chef doesn’t go down well with his regular’s. Nevertheless, the new menu and music at the restaurant bears fruit and starts to attract the hipster crowd.

But instead of embracing the new success Zinos flies to China to seek out his ex-girlfriend Nadine only to find out she has a new lover. Meanwhile, during his absence, his brother Illias gambles away the restaurant to a shady real estate agent. To get the “Soul Kitchen” back on track the brothers need to put their differences aside and work together as a team.

Akin told Associated Press that the change to comedy was intentional, “As a director, I want to make experiments, and I get bored with directors that make one style. I want to change and go on testing my style."

In other Germany-related film festival success, a Silver Lion for Best Direction went to Shirin Neshat for her film Women Without Men (DE/AT/FR), which was produced by Essential Film/Thermidor Filmproduktion in Germany. The film had already been awarded the Premio Mimmo Rotella and the Unicef Prize on Sunday morning.

The main prize of this year’s festival, the Golden Lion for Best Film, went to “Lebanon” (IL/DE/FR) by Samuel Maoz, another co-production with German involvement (Ariel Films).

www.soul-kitchen.de