Mehmet Aktaş

Aktaş is the founder and chief executive of the film production and distribution company, Mîtosfilm, based in Berlin.

In the mid-1990s, Aktaş moved to Germany after completing his studies at law school in Istanbul. While in Germany, he noticed that German audiences often disregarded cinema from the Near East, particularly Kurdish cinema. To address this, Aktaş founded the first Kurdish Film Festival in Germany in 2002, which was supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

With Mîtosfilm, Aktaş has produced feature films such as Close up Kurdistan (2007) directed by Yüksel Yavuz, Land of Legend (2008) directed by Rahim Zabihi, and Après la Chute (2009) directed by Hiner Saleem. In 2009, Aktaş was successful as the producer of No One Knows About Persian Cats directed by Bahman Ghobadi, which was honored at the Cannes Film Festival with the award Un Certain Regard.

Mîtosfilm also functions as a film distribution company, focusing on new Turkish, Kurdish, Iraqi and Iranian auteur cinema. Since 2004, Mîtosfilm has released films in German cinemas, including Turtles Can Fly (2004), Two Girls from Istanbul (2005), Süt (2008), and Min Dît (2010). These films illustrate Aktaş's political aspiration to provide a more authentic image of life in the Near East than what is typically portrayed in the news.