Short Sharp Shock

Three friends in the Altona district of Hamburg: Gabriel, who is Turkish, Bobby, who is Serbian, and Costa, who is Greek. Gabriel comes out of prison trying to build a straight life. Bobby and Costa start working with an Albanian gangster named Muhamer. When Gabriel steps in to save them he puts his own clean start at risk. It is Fatih Akin's first feature. He wrote the screenplay while studying at the Hamburg College of the Arts, working from short films he had already made. It was shot on the streets of Altona and backed by the local company Wuste Filmproduktion. It opened on 15 October 1998 and runs 100 minutes. It was taken as the sign of a new German-Turkish cinema and put the identity crises of German youth from different ethnic backgrounds at its centre. At the 1998 Locarno International Film Festival the three leads shared the Best Actor award, and the film was nominated for the Golden Leopard. It won the Adolf Grimme Award in 2001. Who it is for: viewers curious about where Akin started and who like crime drama set in immigrant neighbourhoods. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the maturity of his later work. This one is rawer and more bound to genre shapes.