(2007; Auf der Anderen Seite, German, Turkish, English) At the outset of director/writer Fatih Akin's intricate, multilingual film, the ending - Bayram, the feast for Muslims celebrating Ibrahim's obedience to sacrifice his son on God's command - commences while the conclusion awaits a new beginning.

In Bremen, Germany, after a few visits with "Jessy," a middle-aged, widowed, Turkish prostitute, whose name is actually Yeter Öztürk (Nursel Koese), Ali Aksu (Tuncel Kurtiz), an elderly Turkish widower, proffers to pay her what she makes as a "lady of easy virtue" if she will come live with him. After being threatened with harm by a pair of Turkish Muslims if she fails to repent and change her ways, Yeter agrees to Ali's offer.

Teaching German at Hamburg University, Ali's son Nejat (Baki Darak) is a professor in whose class Yeter's 27-year-old daughter, Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcay), sleeps, having escaped from Istanbul, pursued by authorities for revolutionary political acts, under the assumed name of Gül Korkmaz. In search of her mother (whom she thinks works in a shoe outlet), Ayten makes acquaintance with Lotte Staub (Patricia Ziolkowska), a college student of English and Spanish, who befriends the Turkish girl and becomes her lesbian lover.

Recovering from a heart attack ("Getting old is evil") - yet drunk, smoking cigarettes, and demanding sex - Ali, when Yeter rebuffs his advances and threatens to leave him, strikes her a fatal blow. As Ali is sent to jail, Nejat ("A murderer is not my father") follows Yeter's body back to Istanbul to begin his search for Ayten with the hope of financing her education as partial recompense for her mother's death.

He purchases a German bookshop and puts up posters of Ayten's mother's picture throughout the Turkish city. Unbeknownst to him, Ayten is in Bremen, residing in the home of Susanne Staub (Hanna Schygulla), Lotte's mother, who, lacking appreciation of political complexities, assures Ayten: "Everything will get better when you [Turkey] get into the European Union."

Caught by the German police without proper documentation of identification, Ayten applies for asylum; when her request is denied, she is deported back to Turkey where she is arrested and sent to prison as a member of a terrorist organization. (Also incarcerated with her are other young women, former radical associates, who were captured earlier when Ayten's cell phone was recovered by the authorities during a May Day melee she created by firing a pistol.)

Passionate and impulsive, Lotte drops her studies and travels to Turkey to see what she can do to help Ayten. While waiting for official permission to visit her friend in prison - her mother having refused to further support her quest - she rents a room from Nejat. Finally granted a permit to see Ayten, promising that she's willing to help in any way, she agrees to performing a dangerous assignment. Her death creates an international incident.

As Susanne arrives at the airport in Istanbul, she passes Nejat's father (who once had told his son as a child that he would make God his enemy to protect the boy), having been deported from Germany on his way to his former home in Trabzon on the Black Coast. Filled with grief and guilt, Susanne's desire becomes an obsession to fulfill Lotte's purpose.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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