35 mm, Farbe, 86 Min.,  1988 Production:  Hamburger Kino-Kompagnie / ZDF   Director:  Bohm, Hark Screenplay: Hark Bohm, nach Tagebüchern von S.A. Music: Jens-Peter Ostendorf Editor: Moune Barius Camera: Slawomir Idziak   Actors:  Ayse Romey, Ilhan Emirli, Nursel Köse, Sebnem Seldüz, Sener Sen, Sevgi Özdamar, Toto Karaca, Uwe Bohm

Distribution data: IN 1548 16mm Language versions: Original version with German, English, French or Spanish subtitles NO TV RIGHTS NO COMMERCIAL RIGHTS

Outside a karate club in Hamburg-Altona, Jan makes a bet with his friend that he would be able to "throw" any girl within a matter of days. Chance decides that Yasemin, a young Turkish girl who has grown up in Germany, should be the object of this bet. From then on Jan is always after the girl; his persistance only makes her afraid, afraid of her conservative father, and even more afraid of her uncle, a Muslim traditionalist who sees it as a sin that she is going to a grammar school and is a member of a karate club.

Jan turns up uninvited at Yasemin's sister's wedding feast and is politely ushered out. Her father proudly announces that Yasemin may finish school and study at university with the intention and duty to become a pediatrician. However the next morning everything takes on a new aspect: Hassan, the young bridegroom, cannot produce a blood-stained bedsheet as proof of his wife's innocence. The bride's father talks of loss of honour, forbids Yasemin to leave the house ever again, she should work in his grocery shop. Yasemin's teacher threatens to report him to the police.

In the meantime Jan continues his obstinate attempts to conquer Yasemin's heart: the bet has become serious. They meet on a pleasure boat, but Yasemin can only just prevent Dursan, a close relative, hearing about the meeting. However, Dursan behaves very suspiciously in the karate club, and there are violent clashes between him and Jan. Yasemin's father decides to send his daughter back to Turkey. She threatens to kill herself. At the last minute, Jan arrives, and Yasemin manages to flee with the young man who truly loves her.

The question as to why a German director decided to place a Turkish family in the centre of his story, is rephrased by Hark Bohm. "I have made a film of a love story between a German and a Turkish girl who has grown up in Germany. That is a very different starting point." This description is decisive, as Yasemin has long since taken on values from her surroundings outside the family, from school, the sports club and the atmosphere of the city, and these values must necessarily differ radically from those brought from Turkey by her parents' generation. "She thinks and acts like a modern, intelligent West European woman. If she returned to her Anatolian village, she would be looked on as a German. And she would feel herself a stranger there in a world where women, according to the Muslim law, have to wear a head covering." (Bohm)

The conflicts between the two worlds in which Yasemin lives, are revealed clearly for the first time by the love story. Expectations of her as a Hamburg grammar school girl do not fit in with expectations of her as a daughter of a traditionalist Turkish family. The conflict escalates, there seems to be no solution, in spite of Yasemin's successful flight. The contradictions are too large and too incomprehensible for Jan, the supposed "rescuer". A gentler approach cannot be expected even from him.

Hark Bohm takes sides, but without denouncing. Yasemin's father appears as a very loving, good-hearted man, who always has to be reminded of the Muslim values of their homeland Turkey by his brother, and who is brought to his inflexible reaction by the chain of events. This is not an attempt to play off German or West European values against Turkish ideas; the essence of the film is directed, in common with many works by Turkish directors, against the paternalistic system, against male dominance which turns women into victims in the end, particularly if the system is practised in a different world to the one in which it originated.

Hark Bohm wanted to write a love story "played out in Hamburg-Altona, the district that I know well. Here, as in many metropolises, there is nothing exotic about the strong Turkish presence in everyday life, it has been reality for so long. I began by developing and researching this story within this social and geographical framework. I stayed at schools in Altona and Wilhelmsburg for weeks on end. I went to Turkish families. I began learning Turkish and went to Turkey. And above all, I talked to many girls just like Yasemin. And then I had a stroke of luck, when two girls entrusted me with their diaries." (Bohm)

The production is convincing primarily because of its spontaneity. The actors - all amateurs, with the exceptions of Uwe Bohm (Jan) and Sener Sen (Yasemin's father) - are supported by a very mobile hand camera, allowing them to act out many scenes in long planning sequences without cuts, to integrate themselves into the situation and develop their emotions in it, instead of having to produce them in short fragmentary clips. Against this background the dialogue is also very authentic, with the mixture of German and Turkish, right through to the bewilderment of Yasemin's father who mixes German words in with his mother tongue when there is no Turkish equivalent. For example, the term "deprivation of freedom".

Hans Günther Pflaum

Key words: Family, Foreigners in the Federal Republic of Germany, Love/Marriage/Relationships, Youth