EXCLUSIVE: Award-winning filmmaker Fatih Akin has signed with Sentient Entertainment for management across all areas.

The German-Turkish creative is perhaps best known for his thriller In the Fade, which claimed the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2017 and brought star Diane Kruger the Cannes Film Festival’s award for Best Actress. The film was selected to compete there for the Palme D’Or and was Germany’s official entry for the Academy Awards.

Akin is currently in production on his next film, Rheingold, based on the real-life story of Turkish gangster rapper Xatar. He also recently acquired the rights to Buddha, the graphic novel from acclaimed Japanese illustrator Osamu Tezuka, and will adapt it as a TV series, which Sentient is currently packaging.

Sentient’s signing of Akin was announced on Monday by the company’s founder and CEO Renee Tab and producer Christopher Tuffin. “I am so honored to work with Fatih and his team in Hamburg to support them in telling provocative, profound and compelling stories,” said Tab. “We are committed to expanding his reach to move audiences across the globe.”

A major career breakthrough came for Akin in 2004, with his romantic drama Head-On, which won the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear, along with the Best Film and Audience Awards at the European Film Awards. He subsequently went on win Cannes and the European Film Awards’ prizes for Best Screenplay with his 2007 drama, The Edge of Heaven.

Akin made his feature debut back in 1998 with Short Sharp Shock, which notched both the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival and the Pierrot—the Bavarian Film Award for Best Young Director. In his 26-year career as a director, he’s also helmed the comedies In July (2000) and Soul Kitchen (2009), dramedy Solino (2002), and the documentary We Forgot to Go Back, among other projects.

Tab founded Sentient in 2010, after working for nine years as a motion picture and literary agent at ICM. Her roster of international filmmaker clients at the management and production company also includes Pierre Morel (Taken), Lucía Puenzo (Wakolda, XXY), Sean Conway (EP, We Are Who We Are), Antonio Negret (CW’s Riverdale), Ben Hibon (Star Trek: Prodigy), and Michael Zam and Jaffe Cohen (co-creators of FX’s Feud: Bette and Joan). The company’s credits on the production side include Feud: Bette and Joan, French heist thriller Overdrive which Paramount acquired for the U.S., Maps to the Stars, from Tab’s longtime ICM client David Cronenberg, and the recent STX/Lakeshore thriller Peppermint starring Jennifer Garner, and directed by client (and Sentient producing partner) Morel.

Akin continues to be represented by UTA.