GEGEN DIE WAND - Black Box Filmmuseum Düsseldorf

In the organizer's words:

AGAINST THE WALL

D 2004 - 121 min - 35 mm - FSK 12 - R: Fatih Akin - B: Fatih Akin
C: Rainer Klausmann - D: Birol Ünel, Sibel Kekilli, Catrin Striebeck, Güven Kıraç, Stefan Gebelhoff, Meltem Cumbul and others.

Turkish-German couple Sibel and Cahit meet in a hospital after both have tried to take their own lives. Despite the unusual encounter and the big age difference, they initially enter into a sham marriage, which Sibel persuades Cahit to enter into in order to escape the constraints of her own family. However, when the two become emotionally close, their relationship becomes drastically more complicated.
Without embellishment, GEGEN DIE WAND tells a love story that is characterized by tenderness and self-destruction at the same time. It is also about the search for one's own identity as a German-Turkish woman, whereby the film impressively shows that this search is far more brutal and downright life-threatening for Sibel as a woman.
Fatih Akin's first film from his trilogy "Love, Death and the Devil" won the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlinale - making it the first German winner in 17 years.

Introduction on May 26: Dana Margarete Adele Bulic
(Filmforum - Freundeskreis des Filmmuseums)