Fatih Akin's 'Ghost Song' to Open San Sebastián
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Fatih Akin's "Ghost Song" ("Geister") is set as San Sebastián's opening night film, world-premiering in main competition on Sept. 18 and described by the festival as "a poetic drama about loss and longing."
- Werner Herzog will accept a San Sebastián career achievement Donostia Award at the same opening gala, giving the festival what the piece calls "a strong German accent" to its launch.
- "Ghost Song" stars Eren M. Güvercin and Mariam Dawoud as a 20-year-old woman who, after her death, enters her lover's dreams — which Akin frames as "a love story, but not like the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore film—though maybe it is a mix between the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore film and Jean-Paul Sartre."
- Fatih Akin previously won the Berlin Golden Bear for 2004's "Head-On," Cannes best screenplay for 2007's "The Edge of Heaven," and Cannes best actress (Diane Kruger) plus a Golden Globe for 2017's "In the Fade," before a mid-career stretch complicated by big-budget flop "The Cut."
- "Ghost Song" is produced by Akin's Bombero International and Warner Bros. Film Productions Germany, with Rialto Film co-producing — the same partnership behind his German box-office hit "Amrun," which Akin credits with saving his production company.
- The film positions itself as what Akin calls "arthouse for teens," reflecting both his stated resolution "with each film to do it different" and a broader European shift toward younger-skewing arthouse as baby boomers age out of cinemas.
Why it matters: San Sebastián's opening night is effectively a German double-header, pairing a world-premiere from a Berlin Golden Bear and Cannes winner with a Donostia for Werner Herzog. For Akin, whose production company was rescued by last year's "Amrun," "Ghost Song" is a marquee re-entry with a deliberate generational pitch — arthouse aimed at teen and young-adult audiences that traditional European art cinemas are now scrambling to court as their core demographic ages out.
Ask SkimNews
