German-Turkish director Fatih Akin, whose Ghost Song opened the San Sebastian International Film Festival on Friday, is preparing to shoot his adaptation of Louis de Bernières’ Birds Without Wings in Turkey in summer 2027.
Akin is travelling to Turkey in November to scout locations for the project, which is based on his own screenplay and will be shot in Turkish and Greek. The filmmaker’s Hamburg-based production company Bombero International is leading the European co-production.
Published in 2004, Bernières’ novel traces the fortunes of a small community in southwestern Anatolia at the beginning of the 20th century, where the peaceful co-existence of Christian Greeks and Muslim Turks is changed forever by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the onset of the First World War.
Birds Without Wings will see Akin return to shooting in Turkey for the first time since his 2007 film The Edge Of Heaven, which was shot in Istanbul and along the Black Sea coast in Trabzon as well as at locations in Germany.
Akin is also lining up to shoot the music documentary Anatolischer Drache about the alternative musician Gaye Su Akyol and her move from her homeland to establish a new life in Berlin, in the German capital in January.
The filmmaker previously turned his camera on the Turkish music scene in his 2005 documentary Crossing The Bridge - The Sound Of Istanbul.
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