Hüseyin Tabak

Biography

Hüseyin Tabak was born on 15 July 1981 in Lemgo to Turkish-Kurdish immigrants and grew up in Bad Salzuflen. At the age of 22 he moved to Hamburg, where he did some internships with television productions before he worked his way up to become production manager and assistant director. At that time, he also realised a number of his own short films.   

In 2006 Tabak began studying directing and screenwriting at the Vienna Film Academy; his professors included Michael Haneke and Peter Patzak. His first student short feature film "Cheeese..." (DE/AT 2008), about the fate of a Kurdish family during the Iraq war, was shown at numerous international festivals and won several awards.   

Following this success, Tabak shot his first feature-length film in the second half of 2008: the documentary "Kick Off", about the Austrian national homeless team on their way to the Homeless World Cup in Melbourne, Australia, an annual football tournament organised by Homeless World Cup Foundation. Almost two years later, "Kick Off" celebrated its premiere at the Diagonale in Graz and won the Audience Award as well as the Youth Jury Award for Best Newcomer Film. A few months later, it also received the Vienna Film Prize for Best Austrian Documentary at the Viennale.

In 2012 Tabak presented his first feature-length fiction film at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Czech Republic): "Deine Schönheit ist nichts wert" ("Your Beauty Is Worth Nothing", AT/TR) deals with the topics migration and integration through the eyes of a twelve-year old boy with Turkish-Kurdish roots who is new in Vienna. The film was also screened at numerous other festivals and won six awards at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, including Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Leading Actor. At the Austrian Film Award 2014 "Deine Schönheit ist nichts wert" won in four categories (Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Music). The German theatrical release took place in April 2014.

Tabak's second feature-length film, "Das Pferd auf dem Balkon" (AT), about a boy with Asperger's Syndrome who wants to protect a horse from unscrupulous profiteers, had been released in Austrian cinemas in 2012 already. At the Children's Media Festival Goldener Spatz 2013, the film won the awards for Best Screenplay and Best Leading Actor (Enzo Gaier); at the Lucas International Children's Film Festival in Frankfurt am Main it won the Audience Award and at the Chicago Children's Film Festival it was awarded Best Film. In Germany the film was theatrically released in September 2013.

After that, Hüseyin Tabak again made a documentary film which was to become another festival success: "Die Legende vom hässlichen König" ("The Legend of the Ugly King", 2017), about the eventful life of the Kurdish-Turkish actor, director and author Yılmaz Güney, won the documentary film prize at the Hofer Filmtage and the Öngören Prize for Democracy and Human Rights at the 2018 Turkey/Germany Film Festival. In his award-winning film "Gipsy Queen" (DE/AT 2019), Tabak tells the story of a single Romanian woman in Hamburg St. Pauli who discovers her talent as a boxer. For German television he directed the "Tatort" episode "Borowski und der Fluch der weißen Möwe" (2020). For the crime series "Strafe - nach Ferdinand von Schirach" ("Punishement") he realized the episode "Der Dorn" ("The Thorn", 2022), which premiered at the Cannes International Series Festival in April 2022.  

Before that, in June 2021, Tabak had already made another feature film, which was not released before December 2022: "Oskars Kleid," a tragicomedy about a loving father whose bright child named Oskar declares not to be a boy but a girl.