Golden Bear-winning Turkish-German director Fatih Akin is preparing to shoot his 15th fiction feature this summer, titled Ghost Song. His fourth feature, the 2004 outing Head-On, secured him the top Berlinale gong as well as a European Film Award. He then collected the Best Screenplay Award at the 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival for his 2007 film The Edge of Heaven. In 2009, he won the Special Jury Prize in competition at the Venice Film Festival for Soul Kitchen. He further received a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign-language Film for his 2017 movie In the Fade.

The Hamburg-born filmmaker’s newest project has most recently been awarded €900,000 worth of production support from the MOIN Film Fund (also known as MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein – see the news). The shoot is scheduled to begin this summer in Schleswig-Holstein and should last at least 41 days.

According to a summary released by the MOIN Film Fund, Ghost Song will be a romantic drama that tells the story of an “impossible love” between Aisha and Elias. After the 17-year-old Aisha passes away, she is able to enter the dreams of latter. A passionate romance then emerges between the two of them, which breaks and transcends the boundaries between dreams and real life.

Ghost Song will feature a screenplay by writer Ruth Toma, who previously penned the filmmaker’s 2002 effort Solino. In addition, attached to the project is longtime collaborator Andrew Bird, who is known for editing Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig and who has edited all of Akin’s past fiction features. The film will be a production by Akin’s Hamburg-based production outfit, Bombero International GmbH & Co KG.

This new production announcement for Ghost Song comes as Akin is also working on a documentary, Der anatolischer Drache (lit. “The Anatolian Dragon”), about Turkish singer Gaye Sue Akyol. Akin’s 14th fiction feature, Amrum – a World War II-set coming-of-age period drama led by Diane Kruger (see the news), who previously worked with Akin on In the Fade – is currently in post-production and is scheduled to reach German cinemas in September 2025, distributed by Warner Bros Pictures. It is also rumoured to be in the running for a Cannes selection this year.