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 creating and writing the series Türkisch für Anfänger in 2006 and making his directing debut with its 2012 feature-film adaptation, which he also wrote. 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.