User Reviews

This is a film not to be missed. I was almost in tears by the end of the film - it has been one of the most captivating films I have seen in a long time and is a remarkable piece of Turkish cinema (actor or citizen whatever) & culture . Not to be missed.

This movie was a master piece. I highly recommend it.

Since 1995 the situation has improved. After the year 2000, annual ticket sales reached the 20 millions and since 1995, the number of theatres continuously increased to an approximately 500 theatres country-wide. Now, Turkish films attract millions of spectators and top the blockbuster-lists, often surpassing foreign films in terms of ticket sales. However, it is difficult to speak about the existence of an industry, since most films are rather individual projects of directors who otherwise earn their living in Television, Advertising or Theatre. The distribution of these films are mainly handled by foreign companies such as Warner Bros and United International Pictures.

"Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland" is a German movie that has lots of German, but also Turkish language included. It runs for slightly under 100 minutes and was one of the big winners at the German Film Awards back then. This is a 2011 release, so it has its 5th anniversary this year. The writer and director is Yasemin Samdereli and despite what some awards indicate, this was not her first full feature film as being in charge of the two jobs I just mentioned. The cast, fittingly for the subject, includes many Turkish actors and German film buffs will find a handful familiar names in here, such as Fahri Yardim, Petra Schmidt-Schaller, Aylin Tezel or Tristan Pütter. But it is really all about the story here and not that much about individual characters, performances or story-lines. It is about the whole picture and the characters as a unit I guess. This is the story of a man who gets chosen as the one millionth immigrant in Germany and gets the honor of speaking at a public meeting (that is broadcast on television) with Angela Merkel.

So yeah, this is a movie about the integration of foreign people and foreign culture as a whole. If you are from Germany, you certainly know about the very recent success of the political party AfD and these show that the subject in this movie is still as relevant as it was five years ago, if not more. But unlike the German Film Awards, I cannot say this film was a success. The only aspect that really convinced me was the music. Otherwise, it is a really predictable film that has some tear-jerk moments, but little about it feels really realistic or authentic. I never had the impression life at its rawest form or a compelling story was told. I also think that there were too many characters in here for its own good and it was virtually impossible to make good story-lines around these and elaborate on them properly with that quantity. The consequence was that important story-lines about pregnancies and other crucial subjects felt rushed in for the sake of it. I believe the premise here was good, but the execution was not satisfying overall. Thumbs down. Not recommended.