If Fatih Akin were anything like most of his film-making compatriots, he would have rolled out a "Gegen Die Wand" Mark II. After the success of "Run Lola Run," Tom Tykwer played the Franke Potente card until she got so bored that she ran all the way to California. And the success of "Goodbye Lenin" led to a veritable vomiting up of German movies that tried, and mostly failed, to combine wit and pathos.

Thankfully Akin has eschewed the standard route of flogging a formula for cinematic success until it leads to an early artistic death. In fact his latest film, "Crossing the Bridge - the Sound of Istanbul," while in many ways thematically and musically carrying on where "Head-On" left off, is a completely different format to his previous hit. That alone proves that this is a director who is thinking about more than just bums on seats.

The film is a documentary set in Istanbul dealing with Turkish music -- which involves a lot more than what you hear at your local Kebab takeaway on a Saturday night. It is presented and narrated by the grizzly bassist from the legendary 80s West-Berlin band Einstuerzende Neubauten, Alexander Hacke, who first got to know Fatih Akin when he worked on the music for "Head-On." Hacke even stays in the faded grandeur of the Grand Hotel de Londres, the same hotel featured in the earlier film, from where he sets out in search of the city's sound, drink in one hand, guitar in the other.

The Sound of Music - Turkish Style

Hacke plunges into the seedy underbelly of the bohemian area of Beyoglu and hangs out with 15 various groups or musicians, each one representing a different facet of the Turkish music scene: from grunge rock, electronic experimentalism and hip-hop break-dancers to free jazz, 80s pop and traditional ballads -- all with a Turkish twist. This is a city where medallioned homeboys rap in Turkish, DJ electronic club sets are underscored with Arabesque beats and the long-necked Lyre is used for Jazz improvisations. East not only meets West, but takes it on, tunes it up and spits it out.

Akin succeeds in not only giving a varied and quirky take on the country's music scene, but also an unexpected insight into Turkey's culture and history: a Kurdish singer talks about the prejudice her music has faced through the years; film and photographic footage show glimpses of a bygone Istanbul; and a rural wedding gives a hint of the country's ancient traditions. With performances by iconic stars such as movie legend Orhan Genceby, the grande dame of Istanbul cabaret Muzeyyan Senar or pop diva Sezen Aksu, the film sometimes feels a bit like a crash course in Turkish pop culture. By focusing on music Akin manages to show us more about Turkey than any travel piece could ever hope to achieve.

And of course there is the faded elegance and edgy excitement of Istanbul, always an effective back-drop. Akin has described the film as a homage to his favorite city, which is perversely also where a weakness of the film lies. Grainy digital shots notwithstanding, the city scenes do sometimes feel a bit like an unusually cool ad financed by the National Tourist Board. In view of the fact that homages tend to be by their very nature pretty obsequious, this is not surprising, but you can't help but feel sometimes that it is all a bit too reverential. Is everyone cool, tolerant and talented in Istanbul? It seems that way.

"Head-On" Heads up the German Film Industry

The Hamburg-born 31 year-old Akin achieved world-wide renown with "Head-On." In 2004 it won not only the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival, but also the European Film Prize and the German Film Prize. Since then, the film has been enthusiastically received by critics and audiences in Germany and abroad. A quirky love-story amongst second-generation Turks in Hamburg, it was the first major box-office hit to deal with the experience of Turkish-Germans.

As such, the director is being feted in Germany -- not only as the new face of German film, but also as representative of a new generation of Turkish-Germans who are making a splash on the country's cultural scene, such as Emine Sevgi Ozdamar, who has received prize after prize for her literature, or Mustafa Gundogdu, alias Mousse T., one of Germany's most successful DJ/Producers.