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Head-On

Original title: Gegen die Wand · Turkish title: Duvara Karşı

“You don't really know how much you can love...”

2004 · 2 h 1 min
Directed by Fatih Akin
DramaRomance

Cast

Birol Ünel Sibel Kekilli Catrin Striebeck

Credits

Written by: Fatih Akin

Plot

Cahit, a suicidal middle-aged Turkish German man in Hamburg, meets Sibel, a young woman who has attempted suicide to escape from her strict family. She proposes a marriage of convenience, so that she can live freely. As they live together, they fall in love, but the arrangement leads to violence and exile in Istanbul. Fatih Akin's 2004 film, with Birol Ünel and Sibel Kekilli, won the Golden Bear in Berlin.

Sinekatalog’s take

Fatih Akin's raw German-Turkish drama pairs two damaged people in a marriage of convenience. Wild, punk and tender, it won the Golden Bear and brought Turkish-German cinema into the spotlight.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 7.8 / 10 (61,436 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.

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