Bora Dağtekin

Bora Dağtekin — Biography

Bora Dağtekin was born on 27 October 1978 in Hannover; his mother was German and his father Turkish. He later moved to the city of Ludwigsburg, where he trained as a screenwriter at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, completing his studies in 2006 with a graduation script that turned the German stage classic Die Räuber into an action movie.

After a stint writing advertising copy, he wrote for several German television series, including the daily soap Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten, before making his directing debut with Türkisch für Anfänger in 2006, a series he later adapted into a feature film in 2012. His greatest success came with the 2013 comedy Fack ju Göhte, which ranked as the fourth-highest-grossing German film by admissions and launched two sequels along with a stage musical and a spin-off. He went on to direct Das perfekte Geheimnis and Chantal im Märchenland, and over his career has won a string of television honors including the Deutscher Fernsehpreis, the Adolf-Grimme-Preis, a BANFF World Television Award and the Bayerischer Fernsehpreis.

A frequent collaborator with actors Elyas M'Barek, Jella Haase and Frederick Lau, Dağtekin has said his films are deliberately commercial rather than artistic, a choice he describes as a matter of personal taste.