Almanya: Welcome to Germany

A breezy, colorfully styled comedy, Almanya centers on multiple generations of a German-Turkish clan and marks the feature debut of German helmer Yasemin Samdereli, who, along with younger sister/co-scribe Nesrin, wrote episodes of the popular Teuton soap “Turkish for Beginners”. Deriving its broad humor from cultural misunderstandings and the question of what constitutes national identity, the narrative is neatly structured into two interwoven time frames. The first, set in the present, introduces the Yilmazes in their German home, as patriarch Huseyin insists that his family accompany him for a holiday in Turkey. The second strand follows young Huseyin in distant Anatolia, his arrival in 1964 Germany as the 1,000,001st Gastarbeiter, and his family’s gradual acclimatization – if not assimilation. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)