Mehmet Aktaş
Production
Biography
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.
Known For

A film crew from Germany, filming in a remote village in northeastern Turkey, interviews an elderly Kurdish woman. She performs an ancient ritual to keep alive the memory of the son she lost years ago. The young woman, who helps the German crew with the Kurdish translation, is also the caretaker of seven-year-old Melek. Melek's father is a member of a shadowy organization whose true purpose is unclear. The result of all these people coming together will be devastating.
In the Blind Spot

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.
No One Knows About Persian Cats

Alan, Jan and Liya, born in Kurdistan, raised in Stuttgart, want to grant their deceased mother her final wish: to be buried beside her husband, who died in the war, in their home village in Kurdistan. The clan objects, but the three set out anyway. A risky journey to a homeland wracked by strife.
House Without Roof

No description available.
Das Milan-Protokoll

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.
The Legend of the Ugly King

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

Rojin is a young Kurdish 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 Exam

The talented Hamoudi is an 11-year-old boy with a passion for soccer and an ultimate dream to one day reach the level of his idol Lionel Messi. The day Hamoudi is caught in a horrific suicide attempt, he wakes up severely injured in a hospital. As his parents struggle to keep the family safe, Hamoudi is determined to fight for his shattered dream.
Baghdad Messi

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.
Reseba: The Dark Wind

A young Kurdish man is torn between his mother's nostalgic search of a song in her dreams and an uncertain future with his pregnant girlfriend.
Song of My Mother

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?
Ugly Ducking

They belong to the armed wing of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is also an active guerrilla movement. The mission of these female fighters? Defend Kurdish territory in Iraq and Syria, and defeat ISIS (the armed militants of the so-called Islamic State group), all while embodying a revolutionary ideal advocating female empowerment. As filmmaker Zaynê Akyol follows their highly regimented lives, seasoned fighters like Rojen and Sozdar openly share with us their most intimate thoughts and dreams. Even as fighting against ISIS intensifies in the Middle East, these women bravely continue their battle against barbarism. Offering a window into this largely unknown world, Gulîstan, Land of Roses exposes the hidden face of this highly mediatized war: the female, feminist face of a revolutionary group united by a common vision of freedom.
Gulîstan, Land of Roses
The EU has fallen apart, and in Germany, far-right populists are forming a new government. War is imminent. Jonas has deserted; he and his sister go into hiding at the home of their father, Stuber, whom Jonas has not seen since childhood. But there, the situation escalates. A catastrophe occurs even before the war has begun.
Echo of Tomorrow's War

Young mother Lori must say goodbye to her husband, who decides to join the war against ISIS. She finds herself in a fight in midst her own society. Thus, Lori searches to express her feelings in dance.
The Rain Bride

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.
Daf

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.