mehmet Aktaş is a scriptwriter, producer, and the founder and director of the production company mîtosfilm. Aktaş was born in Turkey in 1966 and grew up in Istanbul. Since 1995, he has been living in Berlin, Germany, which is where he founded mîtosfilm, which specializes in international co-productions. Throughout his career he has proven himself as a successful writer and producer. His recent production The Dark Wind (2016), for which Aktaş also wrote the script,was awarded the Best Muhr Fiction Feature prize at the Dubai International Film Festival, the GrandNewcomer Award at the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg and also won the Cultural Diversity Award under the Patronage of UNESCO at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Furthermore The Dark Wind is the official Oscar entry from Iraq for 2018.
House Without Roof (2016), directed by Soleen Yusef and produced by Mehmet Aktaş, won the Special Grand Jury Award at the Montréal World Film Festival and the First Steps Award as Best Feature Film. Memories on Stone (2014), by director Shawkat Amin Korki, for which Aktaş wrote the script as well as produced the film, won various prizes in film festivals around the world, including Best Film of the Arab World at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Best Film at the 52nd Antalya International Film Festival and the Cultural Diversity Award under the Patronage of UNESCO at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Memories on Stone was also the official Oscar entry from Iraq.
Aktaş is well known for films such as Before Snowfall by director Hisham Zaman, which won the Dragon Award Best Nordic Film at the Göteborg International Film Festival and Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009), which won the prize Un Certain Regard at the Cannes FilmFestival. For his work as a scriptwriter, Aktaş received the Best Script Amanda Award (Norway) and Bes tScreenplay Award at the Carthage Film Festival with Letter to the King (2014) by Hisham Zaman.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and emerging. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.
