In Germany, the existence of multicultural society has become a fact. Contrary to expectations, when the agreement between Germany and Turkey on the employment of Turkish citizens in Germany was concluded on 30th October 1961, the majority of employers induced to come to work in Germany did not return to their homeland after two or three years. Many gastarbeiters decided to stay, and their children were born and grew up in Germany. It became a country of immigration. The image of an increasingly multicultural society is reflected in German cinematography. As the status of the immigrants was changing with time, the filmic language in which they were depicted became richer and more varied. Until recently, the mainstays of immigrant discourse in the German cinema were directors of Turkish origin, such as Fatih Akin, Yilmaz Arslan or Sinan Akkus. Gradually, however, German directors, or those coming from other “migration" countries, began to have their say. Taking their place behind the camera, the second- or third-generation immigrants refreshed German cinematography, in their narratives exceeding by far the stories about alienation familiar from productions made in the 1970's, 80's or 90's. The male and female directors no longer feel themselves to be “gastarbeiters' children", but a part of the German society, and they contribute to the multicultural space their own lifestyle and manner of perceiving the world.

German-Turkish cinema - the drive towards self-determination
Initially, this trend was evident in the output of directors of Turkish origin. At the beginning of the 21st century, it was they who dominated cinema that focused on the topic of migration. In their works, the boundary between “homeland" and “alien land" became blurred, yet the directors were far from curtailing their own identity. They did not beautify the reality, but mercilessly rubbed salt into the wound that the necessity to find one's own place between two cultures and bridge the gap between the past, present and future may become. Those films managed to shed the label of “niche" ones and to gain respect of the intellectually receptive part of the mainstream audience. The German-Turkish cinema was en vogue even before Fatih Akin's Head On (Gegen die Wand) won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival (2004). The concept of German-Turkish cinema has functioned since the 1990's, according to the German Film Institute, “both as part of the wider international trend of the ‘cinema du métissage' and as a manifestation of the new attitude of Turks conscious of their own worth, in the artistic circles of Germany". And so for example Anno Saul, from Bonn, in his Kebab Connection (2004, written by Fatih Akin and Ruth Thoma) depicts the clash of cultures by means of impressive linguistic feats, squabbles in the community and descent into total chaos. The film is a love story and a family comedy, but it has also some plot sidelines, in which two restaurateurs, a “Turk" and a “Greek", compete for clients and the prejudices are (none too subtly) reduced to an absurdity by exaggeration. Ayse Polat's feature-film debut Tour Abroad (Auslandstournee, 2000) focuses on the difficulties encountered by an outsider - a Turkish pop singer. In her En garde (2004), Polat, who is of Kurdish origin, tells the story of a German 16-year-old, whose mother gets rid of her by placing her in a Catholic institution for girls, where she befriends a young Kurdish woman waiting for the outcome of her application for political asylum. Özgür Yildirim, from Hamburg, puts a shocking amount of violence into his feature-film debut Chiko (2007), a bloody gangster drama set in Hamburg's red-light district. It is a story of a small-time criminal of Turkish origin and his rise and fall in the drug-dealing business. In a combination of social environment study and action drama, Yildirim depicts the fatal consequences of an exaggerated code of honour - the ambivalence between morals, mosques and machismo. Yilmaz Arslan's disturbing Fratricide (Brudermord, 2005) tells the tragic story of a young Kurd who comes to Germany in the footsteps of his older brother and, as a result of a quarrel with two Turks, sets off a chain of violent events. That film, although extremely brutal in itself, is a manifesto against racism and intolerance.

Departure from the angry social criticism
Cinema focused on the migrant community and addressed to the minorities has become a thing of the past. Today, the migants' new perspective can be presented by a German director; a case in point is Alexander Riedel and his documentary Run Out (Draußen bleiben, 2007). Friendship between two young women, a Kosovar and an Uighur, living in a refugee hostel, succours them in the no-man's land between childhood and adulthood, between the old homeland, to which nothing binds them any longer, and the new one, where they do not yet feel at home. They both want to stay and belong - if only they are allowed to. Although the film does show the boundless ugliness of the refugee hostel, it refrains from angry social criticism; it is not trying to instill a sense of guilt in the audience, and it does not depict the foreigners as frightened victims of persecution. The young heroines display courage and strength; their actions are motivated not by sadness, but by dynamic desire to take their future into their own hands instead of trusting their fate to chance.
In her feature film Unveiled (Fremde Haut 2005), Angelina Maccarone manages to avoid trite clichés of a narrative about a female asylum-seeker. She traces the story of a young Iranian lesbian who, having fled from from her intolerant, theocratic homeland into Germany, assumes the identity of a male compatriot and living in the backwoods of Swabia falls in love with a fair-haired colleague. The film not only relates the personal story of the heroine, but also shows a fragment of the reality of an asylum-seeker in Germany, with its reception centres, transition camps and endless interviews.
Films made by young German Turks which do not focus directly on their reality (or what we imagine it to be) are an interesting phenomenon that should probably be viewed as a sign of progressing integration. For instance, the hero of the film Elephant Heart (Elefantenherz, 2003) by Züli Aladag, laureate of the Grimme-Preis television award for his controversial film Rage (Wut, 2005), is a rising-star German boxer embroiled in the underhand dealings of a sleazy promoter. Only the hero's friend is Turkish.

We are here and this is OK! In the films that depart from the narrow focus on problems and anguish, a clear tendency towards lightness in the treatment of difficult issues can be observed, and so towards a cinema that would reach a broader audience and develop social awareness. Those films contain more optimism and sense of humour; a case in point is Fatih Akin's Soul Kitchen, a warm comedy set in the multicultural working-class district of Hamburg, in which a long-haired German Greek is feeding a colourful medley of characters: the lost souls, the tireless fighters for daily bread, the romantics attached to their utopias. Yasemin Şamdereli's Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland, in turn - the great success and pleasant surprise of the year 2011 - exudes courage, strength and optimism. Funny, embracing cultures and generations, and ready to juggle stereotypes, this family story is a mirror held up to both Turks and Germans. It has been seen by some 1.4 million viewers over just eight months. The story focuses on the issue of identity - only that the children of the Turkish pater familias, feeling completely integrated, pay it very little attention. This, however, has to change when the patriarch subtly forces them to make a journey to Anatolia. The fresh, delightfully irreverent and politically incorrect comedy, written by Yasemin Şamdereli in cooperation with her younger sister Nasrin, transports us very far from the realms explored by such drastic films as Fatih Akin's Head On or Feo Aladag's Die Fremde. The sisters, who grew up in Dortmund, reveal a subjective, not at all tearful image of immigrant life, eloquently telling the world: We are here and this is OK! And this is a hopeful sign for the future.

Margret Köhler is a film journalist based in Munich