Auf der anderen Seite

The eternal Fassbinder´s muse Hannah Schygulla and Nurgül Yeşilçay in action.

Yesterday I watched Auf der anderen Seite (On the other side) the newest film of german-turkish director Fatih Akin, whose script, written by himself, was awawred at last Cannes Festival."Auf der anderen Seite" is a mosaic about death, indentity and search. Two deaths separete and join two people from the same country but with different backgrounds: a young german-turkish germanistic professor, who loses his "supposed to be" turkish mother in law in Germany, and a german woman, who loses her dauther in Turkey. Both losts are linked throught a coincidental tragedy: The mother in law of the professor was killed by his father and the daugher of the german woman died (indirectly) because of the daugther of the mother in law of the german-turkish professor. In that way Akin´s film cross the bridge between Germany and Turkey, west and orient, life and death, meetings and goodbyes. By watching six different life´s stories crossing themselves on the silvercreen it´s not difficult to think about Babel, another mosaic-mor film of Alejandro González Iñárritu.What makes the difference between Akin and Gonzaléz is that the first one was clever by showing, or better, exposing his own culture with much more property and without self-pity and inferiority complex concerning the socio-political relevance of his "brothers and sisters" compared to the west culture. Akin doesn´t need to show clichés of the turkies in Germany, just in the way that the prejudicers would love to see. On the contrary Gonzaléz prefered to show his people just in the way that american hipocritals would love to see: as victims of their own situation and existence, as "good foregners" that need to prove that they are obedients and good-hearteds. And that´s all. Akin scapes from clichés and goes far beyond of this contemplative view of himself and his people. He shows the truth and doesn´t worry about the fact that he can stand more Germany or Turkey, because he stands in human beings. And that´s "Auf der anderen Seite" is about. It´s about the missing of a little bit humanity. And of course everything gets much, much bettter when we are faced with a huge human being like Hannah Schygulla greving at a hotel apartment in Istanbul by her daugther´s death...