Almanya

I went to see Almanya (the Turkish word for "Germany") expecting to see a movie on the level of e. g. "Süperseks" -- harmless, contrived and predictable. My girlfriend wanted to see it, and I'm smart enough to give in to her once in a while, it's called tactics. I was all the more surprised to see an insightful and witty film that plays with clichés but doesn't pander to them. The story of a family of three generations of Turkish immigrants is revealed through flashbacks -- how young Turkish lovers elope from Anatolia without ever having spoken to each other before: a quintessential story of couth romance, even though it is revealed later in the film that pregnancy also played a slight role in this development. I also liked the gadget that the Turks speak German while the Germans speak a sort of Teutonic gibberish: that way, the movie delivers some real insight how arriving in Germany must have felt like. And also the idea that the movie portrays the life of not the famous one-millionths, but of the one-million-and-first "guest worker". So, welcome to Almanya, enjoy your stay!

I like this movie because it doesn't show the pain, complexity, difficult lives in a dramatic manner. Instead, it adds humors while showing the reality. When Turkish workers move to Germany, it was hard times for them. They worked all the time and continue to their life in a very bad conditions. Then their families also moved to Germany. Thsese time their children and their grand children live adaptation problems. This film shows in a funny manner staying between two cultures.

What else I like about this film is also the characters and the settings were very natural. I believe this film increase the empathy of Germans and Turks to each other.

I'm a New Zealander living in Germany, my girlfriend is Turkish born of emigrant parents. We decided to see this movie after a recommendation from friends.

It was two hours of laughter and a few tears :) It manages to capture the spirit of Turkish emigrants in Germany, their traditional differences and the subtle humor within it. There were many gems of truth in this film that we were able to understand due to our own experiences in both cultures.

To sum it up : an uplifting funny film about heritage and intercultural family life.

Cheers, Capt Kiwi

This movie is somehow similar to my own family history, how me and my sister grew up in germany, how we packed our luggage when going on vacation in turkey, but mind you, we grew up in the 80s and 90s. Still, it catches a lot of the suttle humor we are enjoying and how we face our daily lifes. I also watched the movie with my mum many years after release. She also loved it and shed some tears. Its hard to explain why this movie is so good and how they managed to create such a heartwarming experience, but rest assured, this movie shows you with it lovely characters how we emancipate from our parents and families, how we laugh, how we cry, how we hide to smoke - even as grown ups -, how we raise our children and how we argue as a generation caught between nations and cultures.

I hope you can enjoy this movie, too.

The movie plots on two opposite lines the story of Turk family on the way to Germany as foreign workers, and their way back to Turkey. The relationship between the Turkish guests and the German hosts are idealistically depicted - the Germans love their Turkish hard-workers (if things are so happy, why Turkey has been time and again declined from joining the European Union?), the Turkish family is completely modern - like a normal Westernized family : they react tolerantly to their young daughter who gets pregnant from a non-German guy (no word on the common and prevalent honor-killings among the Turks in Germany, no word on arranged marriage which is also the very common among Turks in Germany, etc.) I've been living many years in Germany, and the story this movie tells us is completely unconvincing.

As far as the artistic sides of the movie are concerned, it starts as a comedy and suddenly, with no seen reason, it turns into saccharine melodrama. The performance, the dialogs, the mimic and gestures reminded me of typical German TV commercials for Washing Powder, Yogurt, etc.