What do two movies, one directed by an Austrian and the other by a Dutchman, playing in theaters right now have in common?
Both Die Fremde (When We Leave) and Takiye: Allah’ın Yolunda (In the Name of God) feature Turkish characters in their leads. Both films tell the stories of Turkish immigrants living in Europe and of characters who feel stuck between two cultures, two countries and between tradition and modernity.
Die Fremde stars Sibel Kekilli, the poster girl for Turkish immigrants in cinema, in an award-winning performance.
Director Feo Aladağ’s debut feature tells the story of Umay, a Turkish woman whose family lives in Germany. The film begins as she ends her marriage, running away from her thuggish husband with her son back to her family in Berlin. She finds out that it doesn’t really matter whether she’s in Turkey or Germany – as long as she’s a single mother, traditions work the same for a Turkish woman, even if she’s right in the middle of a culture with gender equality.
Director Ben Verlong’s Takiye: Allah’ın Yolunda is a genre-bending movie, a thriller that looks deep into the problems faced by Muslims in Europe in the last decade.
The joint Dutch-Turkish production delves into a recurring problem for Turkish people living in Europe: the investment scams that put people’s life savings into jeopardy, and the disappearance of investors with the huge sums of cash.
The film stars Erhan Emre as a man who entrusts his money to an Islamic investment, convincing those around him to do the same. In the end, of course, he is left empty-handed after the company goes bankrupt with the executives nowhere in sight.
From cardboard to realistic characters
The arrival of Turkish immigrants into Germany half a century ago (and later other Western European countries) marked the beginning of a cultural clash that has continued for decades.
Refusing to integrate into the cultures they had now become parts of, Turkish immigrants have generated scorn in the host countries over the years. When German immigrant cinema emerged in the 1970s and later blossomed in 1980s, harsh working conditions became a major theme. The characters, however, were largely cardboard and stereotyping became the norm as far as the development of Turkish roles.
Director Tevfik Başer’s 40 Metrekare Almanya (40 Square Meters of Germany) of 1986 was a first in Turkish cinema when he provided a very realistic glimpse into the lives of Turkish immigrants in Germany.
The film put a female character in its center, the newly-wed Turna (Özay Fecht), who is taken from her village in Turkey to Germany to be locked in a small apartment everyday while her husband goes to work. The film was actually a harbinger of the things to come in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Turkish and German filmmaker Fatih Akın has been a revered name among European cinephiles since the late 1990s with hits like Im Juli (In July) and Solino.
His Golden Bear-winning Gegen die Wand (Head-On), however, would become the benchmark for the depiction of Turkish people living in Germany. Akın not only became the voice of third-generation Turks in Germany with his modern classics like Gegen die Wand and Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven), but he single-handedly maneuvered German cinema to include young Turkish directors and freed Turkish characters from being given stereotypical roles.
Gegen die Wand was a heartbreaking love story of two people living in cultural purgatory, between tradition and modernity, Turkey and Germany, survival and death.
Drawing from his long past as a migrant in Germany, Akın recreated the world of three generations of Turkish migrants in Germany. His genre-defining cinema gave these misfits a voice and an existence in pop culture, which at the end of the decade would open the way for young Turkish directors like Özgür Yıldırım to have their distinct voices in cinema.
Clash of civilizations on film
Young director Özgür Yıldırım’s Chiko of 2008 told the story of the street-smart Turkish boy İsa, known to many as Chiko, and his bumpy ride in the underground world of drugs. The film featured the self-made macho world of young Turkish boys in Germany, boys who become men with violence, drugs, and gang life. Stuck in a world of antiquated traditions and the burden of modern life, the macho underground life was shown to be these third-generation young Turks’ only ticket to self-respect.
Newcomer İnan Temelkuran’s debut feature Made in Europe took a glimpse into the cultural clash between Turks and Europe more broadly. Taking place in a single night, in three different metropolises in Europe, Madrid, Paris and Berlin, the film was more like three short films or a feature with three parts.
Made in Europe portrayed a group of characters (mostly men) in each city, talking as they do with one another, focusing on the sad stories of these men through sharp, realistic and surprisingly shocking dialogue. The film brought a totally fresh perspective to the lives of Turkish immigrants in Europe. Not only for the Turkish audience, the movie was a strong critique of all those celebrating cultural diversity in a Europe under the shadow of the supposed clash of civilizations.
Other directors who have forged into the slippery territory of Turks and Germans are Thomas Arslan, whose Der schöne Tag (A Fine Day) told the story of the struggle of a young Turkish woman (Serpil Turhan) to become an actress; Adnan Köse, who skillfully puts German and Turkish people next to one another in his films; and Buket Alakuş, whose most famous picture, Anam (My Mother), featured a hapless Turkish housewife and mother in Germany.
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