ABSTRACT
In 2004 a German fi lm took the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival for the fi rst time in eighteen years.1 A dark love story about two rebels who meet in a psychiatric ward after attempting suicide, Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (released in English under the title Head On) was not only a critical success around the world but also a box offi ce hit at home, in Germany. That the fi lm’s two leads, like Akin himself, were ethnic Turks makes the achievement the more remarkable. Here was a case of an apparently minor-and minority-movie making it big as a major fi lm.
