Last Updated on April 22, 2021 by themigrationnews
Seventy years after Germany’s infamous Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) and the bilateral deals with various countries to bring in foreign labor for the restructuring of the country, Germany’s ethnic diversity has not been the same since. In the 2011 tragic comedy Almanya: Wilkommen in Deutschland ( Welcome to Germany), director and writer Yasemin Şamdereli presents us the story of three generations of a Turkish immigrant family in Germany that adapts and portrays identity politics and questions of belonging faced by the Turkish guest workers and their descendants.
Almanya spans two parallel storylines taking place in different time periods, one of a family moving from Turkey to Germany as foreign workers, the other is of the same family years later returning to Turkey for a visit as German citizens. When six-year-old Cenk Yilmaz, born to a German mother and a Turkish father, realizes that he was neither chosen for the German nor the Turkish football teams in his school as neither sides viewed him to be enough to belong to their group, he begins to question his identity and asks his family “am I German or Turkish?” In order to understand his heritage, his 22-year-old cousin Canan tells him the story of their Grandfather Huseyin who was among the 1,000,001 guest workers to arrive in Germany in the 1960s to fill in the labor shortage at the time. Huseyin who has just acquired his German citizenship tells his family that he purchased land in his home village in Anatalya in Turkey and he needs his family to come “home” with him to help build the house. Throughout this road trip, the audience gets to understand the story of how they all came to Germany in the first place and how this has affected their struggle with their heritage now.
Almanya is a movie intended not only to bring Turkey to a wider audience, but to culturally examine what we know about the integration of guest workers in Germany in a balanced dramatic, and comic way.
Şamdereli pays attention to small details that eloquently bring to life realistic challenges of identity. In a lighthearted manner, the family attempts to celebrate Christmas just to feel like they belong with their surrounding society, but are soon faced with the horror of their first time seeing Christ on a cross. Their grapple with the language is an experience that almost every immigrant faces upon arriving in a foreign country. Canan’s storyline is of a Turkish girl who gets pregnant from her non-Turkish, non-Muslim boyfriend and this as well gives us an insight into how cultures and traditions are not easily preserved by generations born outside of them. The movie does a great job balancing comedy and drama and at times tugs at the audience’s heartstrings. Although Turkish, Huseyin was refused burial on Turkish land due to his recently acquired German citizenship. We are presented with the harsh reality of the in-betweenness that immigrants live through, always a fine line away from being neither this nor that. The question of ‘home’ becomes very prominent in this movie. What we know about the term ‘home’ ceases to exist and its place comes to a concept only an individual can identify for themselves. Additionally, the quotes used to accentuate the parallel between the family before and after coming to Germany resonate with the viewer and become impossible to resist.
“We are the sum of everything that happened before us, everything that was done under our eyes, everything that was done to us. We are every human being and everything whose existence influenced ours or was influenced by us. We are everything that happens after we are no more and what would not happen if we had not come.”
Perhaps one of the strongest ways to end a movie was the quote left on the black screen replacing the most commonly seen The End. The audience sees the words “Wirrieften Arbeitskräfte, eskamen Menschen”(We called for workers, and people came)by the Swiss author Max Frisch in 1965. It felt like a strong reminder that in the midst of statistics and numbers, in the midst of headlines and news on immigrants, we forget the stories of individuals who are not just a collective identity meant to be solely discussed and talked about as policy issues. The quote serves as a beautiful conclusion to a movie that starts by painting itself as a historical retelling of a significant time period in Germany’s transformation, yet continues as a coming-of-age story of a family that finds itself in two completely different countries that come to create who they are as a whole.
Lina Mansour is currently pursuing a Masters in European Politics and International Relations. She previously worked for the International Organization for Migration (IOM Egypt) and has a particular interest in Euro-Mediterranean relations. She is an avid reader who enjoys books about cultural and identity politics. Linkedin: @linamansour Twitter: @mindoflina