The aim of the article is to address the different production strategies and formal solutions proposed by two European films by German-Turkish directors, Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven, Fatih Akin, 2007), and Almanya: Willkommen in Deutschland (Almanya: Welcome to Germany, Yasemin and Nesrin Samdereli, 2011). The article will analyze the role of the spatial configurations and the temporal fragmentations in the representation of cultural conflicts and problematic identities. Both narratives address migration and border crossing issues, exploring the contemporary relations between (neutral) Germany and (exotic) Turkey. However, the approaches of the two films to these issues are very different, also because of the context of production and distribution. The analysis of these films will therefore be conducted in relation to the European cinematographic market, spatial-temporal configurations, and border thinking. It will be shown how European cinema responds to deep changes on imaginary, economic, and social levels, representing geopolitical mutations through narrative, formal, and productive choices.
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Transnational Subjects in a Multiple Europe: Auf der anderen Seite and Almanya: Willkommen in Deutschland
Text.Serial.Journal
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Cinéma & Cie
Ilaria De Pascalis
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Transnational Subjects in a Multiple Europe: Auf der anderen Seite and Almanya: Willkommen in Deutschland
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13
Transnational Subjects in a Multiple Europe
Auf der anderen Seite and Almanya: Willkommen in Deutschland
Ilaria De Pascalis, Università degli Studi Roma Tre




  Abstract
  The aim of the article is to address the different production strategies and formal solutions
  proposed by two European films by German-Turkish directors, Auf der anderen Seite (The
  Edge of Heaven, Fatih Akin, 2007), and Almanya: Willkommen in Deutschland (Almanya:
  Welcome to Germany, Yasemin and Nesrin Samdereli, 2011). The article will analyze the role
  of the spatial configurations and the temporal fragmentations in the representation of cultural
  conflicts and problematic identities. Both narratives address migration and border crossing
  issues, exploring the contemporary relations between (neutral) Germany and (exotic) Turkey.
  However, the approaches of the two films to these issues are very different, also because of the
  context of production and distribution. The analysis of these films will therefore be conducted
  in relation to the European cinematographic market, spatial-temporal configurations, and bor-
  der thinking. It will be shown how European cinema responds to deep changes on imaginary,
  economic, and social levels, representing geopolitical mutations through narrative, formal,
  and productive choices.




   Contemporary European cinema has often addressed geopolitical changes and their effects on
hegemonic imaginaries. In the last twenty years, the idea of a solid state, defined by its national
borders (geographical as well as cultural) and producing a shared identity for its inhabitants, has
been radically challenged. The strengthening of the European Union’s agreements, the definition of
its institutions, and its expansion toward Eastern states have contributed to a change in imaginaries
and identities. The representation of transnational connections in film and media has assumed a
pivotal role in popular narratives, and migrants from inside and outside of Europe have been at
the center of many stories.
   The web of interconnections between diasporic subjects has problematized the idea of
belonging; the notion of a “national identity,” representable through cinematic narration, has
been repeatedly challenged. The concept of the nation, however, far from having been erased
or considered useless, has acquired new meanings in relation to local/global categories and the
transnational approach.1 Germany is among the countries that have historically contributed to the
construction of the European concept of national identity.2 Due to its internal division, produced
by post-war negotiations, and the role that guest workers had during the booming economy of

Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIII, no. 20, Spring 2013                                                      53
Ilaria De Pascalis

the 1960s, Germany today has to face many conflicts between the various identities within its
geographical boundaries. Moreover, contemporary German cinema shares production processes
and imaginaries with other “national cinemas” in Europe.3 European and German cinema are no
longer famous only for their “auteur films;” nor is genre cinema only synonymous with mindless
entertainment. Hegemonic imaginaries and popular modes of production include the staging of
cultural conflicts, problematic family bonds, and articulated spatial and temporal configurations.
  With this in mind, I would like to address the fragmentation of temporality and the spatial
dialectics proposed by two contemporary films: Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven,
Fatih Akin, 2007), and Almanya: Willkommen in Deutschland (Almanya: Welcome to Germany,
Yasemin and Nesrin Samdereli, 2011). Both narratives address migration and border-crossing
issues, exploring contemporary linkages between Germany and Turkey. However, the approaches
of the two films are very different, in their stylistic choices and in the context of their production
and consumption. An analysis of these films will be conducted in relation to the European
cinematographic market, spatial-temporal configurations, and border thinking. In doing so, this
paper aims to show how European cinema responds to deep changes on imaginary, economic,
and social levels, representing geopolitical mutations through narrative, formal, and productive
choices.



The transnational scenario: Production strategies and the role of film festivals

  Directed by second-generation Turkish-German filmmakers, Almanya and The Edge of Heaven
avail themselves of the institutional funding offered by the German Federal Film Board, the
Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA). They are therefore included in the category of national cinema; in this
way, they contribute to the blurring of the cultural boundaries traditionally posed by institutional
bureaucracy.4 However, their representation of “local” cultures and their distribution patterns are
very different. The Edge of Heaven emphasizes regional locations (Bremen, Hamburg, Istanbul,
Trabzon), in order to “provide access-points for the international and global cinema markets,
which includes the national audience.”5 Almanya is more oriented toward a national market and
distribution, as is also shown by its visualization of the “exotic” Turkey and the “institutional”
Germany.
  In European cinema, localization is a conscious strategy to help the film meet the market,
through the production of identities. The construction of an ongoing relation between the regional,
the national, and the transnational is pursued by contemporary films in order to elaborate a wider
European scenario, of which international film festivals become a celebration. Thomas Elsaesser
underlines how “the festival circuit […] holds some of these manifestations of post-national
cinema together, giving them a European dimension, at the same time as it makes them enter into
global symbolic economies, potentially re-writing many of the usual markers of identity.”6
  The Edge of Heaven was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, where it won the Prix du
Scénario; the same year, Fatih Akin won the European Film Award for Best European Screenwriter
for this film. Almanya was presented out of competition during the 61st Berlin International Film
Festival of 2011, and it was nominated in other competitions in Germany and in the US. Both are
part of a wave of films made by directors and screenwriter of foreign (especially Turkish) descent,

54
                                                    Transnational Subjects in a Multiple Europe

usually co-produced by private and public service institutions, presented in international festivals
and narrating the “ordinary multiculturalism” dominating contemporary Germany.7 Therefore,
they both contribute to a transnational imaginary for European cinema; however, they fulfill
different needs in the same national market, and are differently distributed in the foreign market.
  With The Edge of Heaven, Akin situates himself in the tradition of European auteur cinema,
especially through the casting choices: the character of Susanne is interpreted by Hanna Schygulla,
an actress who has often appeared in films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Already Gegen die
Wand (Head On, 2004), Akin’s previous film, made references to Fassbinder, namely to Angst
essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, 1974).8 With its art cinema references and worldwide
distribution, The Edge of Heaven is representative of European cinema as “world cinema.” It is a
cinema that positions itself between art film and mainstream productions;9 it is usually a product of
cultural hybridity and of a transnational scenario, both at the productive level and in its narrative
choices.10 The Edge of Heaven programmatically addresses issues of belonging and exclusion,
questioning institutional borders. It can be compared with other films and audiovisual narrations
that aim to entertain the audience by interrogating cultural conflicts and global networks.11 The
constant exchange between the global and the local is one of the main themes of Akin’s film,
and contributes to the display of power relations. The random encounters between the characters
mirror a complex balance of political and cultural positions.
  Almanya is part of a wider group of European comedies that directly address the clash of
cultures. There are many examples of this subgenre from different national cinemas: from the
French Chouchou (Merzak Allouache, 2003) to the Italian Into Paradiso (Paola Randi, 2010),
from the British Bend it Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha, 2002), to the Swedish Jalla! Jalla!
(Josef Fares, 2000). The previous work of the Samdereli sisters with the German sitcom Türkisch
für Anfänger (Turkish for Beginners, 2006-2008) already underlined their interest in the interlacing
of familial bonds with cultural conflicts. Exponents of the last generation of filmmakers with
diasporic backgrounds, the Samderelis are particularly interested in positioning themselves at the
core of the multicultural Germany, embodied by a new Berlin whose representation can be likened
to that of many other European metropoles.



Poststructuralism and scattered temporalities: Virtualization and representation

  To say that European cinema addresses the problematic identities generated by changes in
geopolitical assets is obviously not to consider films mirrors of “reality.” Film studies, in the wake
of (or against) poststructuralism, have often discussed the links between phenomenal experiences
and their cinematographic (i.e., linguistic, discursive, aesthetic) representation. Therefore, many
have underlined how cinema contributes to the construction of individual and collective imaginary
scenarios, and its narratives negotiate different positions in relation with hegemonic discourses.
  An important contribution to the debate about webs of power and their performance comes
from Rey Chow. The theorist starts from Martin Heidegger’s reflection on the world conceived
as a picture. However, according to Chow, the contemporary world is not only a picture: it is
a target, violently caught in the space between vision and representation. In her analysis, the
world’s virtualization and visualization come together: everything knowable exists only inside the

                                                                                                   55
Ilaria De Pascalis

representation.12 The “world picture” is mediated by violent technologies of vision and control, and
power chains are particularly constrictive. In a context dominated by economic globalization and
cultural conflicts that are only too “real” and dangerous, Chow considers it essential to reformulate
referentiality. The processes of the world’s representation that make meaning accessible do not
produce de-materialization through virtuality, nor the relativity of equivalent differences. Global
media products and comparative studies also use two main paradigms: “Europe and Its Others”
and “Post-European Culture and the West.”13 To overcome the duality of these spatial categories,
media and film studies have to relocate audiovisual narratives in their historical positions, and they
have also to address these narratives’ specific inner temporal configuration.14
   Space and time share a similar role in the films’ production and consumption, and they are
essential to the narrative interpretation as well. Because it aims to belong to the global art cinema,
The Edge of Heaven adheres to a complex spatial-temporal configuration that rejects any simplistic
dualism. Almanya also represents historical knowledge about cultural conflicts, but its domestic
target influences the construction of Germany as a “neutral” space of belonging, ironically opposed
to the “exotic” Turkey. Moreover, Almanya produces the historical past as a private and nostalgic
narrative, playing with the association between Turkey and the past (sometimes in the sense
of backwardness). In fact, it follows the journey of an extended family of Turkish origin from
Germany to their native land. This journey is intertwined with several other narrative strands: the
love story between Hüseyin and Fatma, Hüseyin’s migration in Germany as a guest worker in the
1960s, and finally the family reunion. The voiceover of the young niece, Canan, narrates both the
present and the past, directly addressing the audience. The visualization of the characters’ dreams,
thoughts, fantasies, and desires, and the photography chosen to recall the nostalgic past in Turkey,
are in conflict with the occasional envisioning of everyday life in Germany. In this way, we are
always oriented in space and time, but the representation refuses to adhere to a “verisimilar”
style.15 The past is playfully created as a “traditional past” through costumes and scenography, and
the present is also affected by the fantastic, magical, and metaphoric flavor that permeates the film.
   The Edge of Heaven instead dislodges the narration flow, disorienting the audience by going
backward and forward in time.16 Akin’s film thereby interrogates the contingency of possible
becomings and underlines the network interlacing the lives of the different subjects in labyrinthine
patterns. The film narrates the intertwining stories of six characters: it begins by following the old
Ali, a Turkish guest worker in Bremen, and his relationship with the Turkish prostitute Yeter. Ali
kills her during a violent argument; his son Nejat goes to Istanbul to find Yeter’s daughter, Ayten.
However, in the meantime, Ayten has gone to Bremen to escape the Turkish police and find her
mother. In Germany she meets Lotte, and they fall in love. However, Ayten’s request for asylum
is refused, and she is sent back to Turkey, where she has to face a prison sentence for terrorism.
Lotte follows Ayten and casually rents a room in Nejat’s home, though he will never know that
she is Ayten’s girlfriend. While she is trying to recover Ayten’s gun, Lotte is robbed and killed by a
group of children; her mother Susanne goes to Istanbul to retrieve her body. Inspired by long talks
with Susanne, Nejat finally decides to forgive his father for Yeter’s murder and to join him in Ali’s
hometown Trabzon, while Susanne decides to help Ayten as Lotte would have done.
   Temporality is thus exposed in its complexity and in its randomness, questioning the European
tradition of narrative as a structure to organize time.17 The main narrative paths (the one involving
Nejat and the one following Ayten) begin on 1 May of the same year and proceed in parallel, but


56
                                                     Transnational Subjects in a Multiple Europe

they are narrated one after the other. Therefore, time’s perception is contradictory; on the one
hand, a linear conception of time still endures and gives the audience the potential to reconstruct
the narration flow. On the other hand, categories such as “the past” or “the future” are exhibited
in their cultural construction, and are part of the differential temporality dominating postcolonial
theory and poststructuralism. In particular, the scattered temporalities experienced by migrants are
a byproduct of the diasporic and global scenario, where past, present, and future always coexist
as representations.18
  In any case, the temporalities of Almanya and The Edge of Heaven are reflected in their different
approaches to the spatiality of Germany and Turkey. Both films reject the staging of “Turkish”
characters as minoritized victims of migration and global economy, but they propose different
solutions for the power relations and hegemonic positions of the subjects.



European cinema, world cinema: On the Other’s side

   The Edge of Heaven spatially represents the transformation from migrant (as opposed to
“native”) to “alien” (as opposed to citizen). Ali and Yeter are part of the first waves of migrants
– people who came to Germany in search of better economic opportunities and, incidentally,
of the institutional respect of human and civil rights. Their home is Bremen, visualized as a
comfortable space inhabited by traditional families. Ayten, instead, belongs to the generation
of asylum seekers: aliens who escaped from political persecution.19 She brings to Hamburg the
violence and harshness of the political conflicts experienced in Istanbul. Ayten’s discourses on
Turkish reality reproduce the position of “globalism,” according to which gendered and political
violence is “primarily an effect of global capitalism without accounting for the ways in which
global manifestations of power differ from as much as they intensify earlier and more traditional
forms of patriarchy within the nation-state.”20
   Proving Ayten wrong in her explanation of political relations, the film proposes instead a different
discourse on the border. As observed by Rosa Linda Fregoso in a different context, the visual and
narrative emphasis on power asymmetries, and on the clash of cultures, is useful to scatter the
dialectic between the victims and their persecutors, creating a new space for agency and activism.21
In other words, cultural production from and about the border narrates and represents the agency
of excluded citizens, contributing to the production of social transformation and political action.
This is the reason why this section is called “On the Other’s side,” a reference to the German
title Auf der anderen Seite. The film aspires to produce a discourse that belongs to what Ella
Shohat and Robert Stam call “polycentric multiculturalism:” a perspective that calls for a strong
refusal of Eurocentrism in favor of a “constitutive heterogeneity,” a counterhegemonic position
that emphasizes hybridization.22 The characters are taken in their institutional and hegemonic
cultural positions; their multiplicity reflects the scattered geography of The Edge of Heaven, and
they participate in the production of multifaceted perceptions of Germany and Turkey at a time
when there was widespread political and institutional debate on the admission of Turkey in the
European Union.
   In 1999, Turkey obtained the status of candidate for EU membership; however, before obtaining
full membership, its governments had to demonstrate that certain key political and juridical

                                                                                                    57
Ilaria De Pascalis

changes had taken place. From 1999 to 2005, some of these transformations were effectively
realized, and the European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Turkey, which are
still unconcluded. At the very heart of the cultural debate was the possibility for the EU to truly
influence the politics of an external government, and to change through diplomacy the precarious
condition of human and civil rights in a non-member state.23 This problematic issue is verbalized
in The Edge of Heaven in an argument between Ayten and Susanne.
   In this brief sequence, the shot scale constructs a complex space inside Susanne’s house. The
sequence begins with an establishing shot of the kitchen, where Susanne is sitting at the table.
This placid, still, repetitive space is invaded by Ayten and her aggressive voice, while she moves
around. The conversation begins neutrally, with Susanne asking Ayten about her political stances;
but when Susanne suggests that the European Union can offer progress and freedom, Ayten
declares that she does not trust the leaders of this institution because they are just looking for
new space to expand global colonialism. While uttering this line, Ayten moves off-screen; after
the cut, she is framed in a close-up (fig. 1), as is Susanne in the counter-shot (fig. 2). They are
definitely divided, and the familiar space of the kitchen is constructed around this opposition.
The sequence ends with Susanne looking through the window, while Lotte leaves with Ayten; the
glass separating them, and the longing connoted in many point-of-view shots in this film, mark the
irreconcilable division between the European Susanne, who believes in democracy and progress,
and the Turkish Ayten, who underlines the importance of fighting for everyone’s rights.




                                              Figs. 1-2

   Ayten and Susanne will find visual and emotional reconciliation only at the end of the film,
after the death of Lotte. When Susanne visits Ayten in the prison the shot/counter-shot structure
includes the two women in the same frame, even though they are physically separated by the
glass and the bars of the parlor. Later, they will meet again in Nejat’s bookshop, with a restored
establishing shot framing them both, gradually transformed into a medium full shot through a slow
zoom in (fig. 3). Susanne will probably never be able to replace Yeter for Ayten, nor will Ayten
become a substitute for Lotte, but the two women are able to bridge the gap that divides their
positions emotionally.
   The Edge of Heaven thus proposes an opposition between the placid Europe, where political
fighting is by now far away, and Turkey, where there is an ongoing struggle for human, civil, and
political rights.24 This opposition is also sketched through the different representations of the two
parades on 1 May. The first one is a reassuring demonstration in Bremen, small, tidy, and including
families (fig. 4).


58
                                                      Transnational Subjects in a Multiple Europe




                                                Figs. 3-4

  It is framed with shots from an anthropomorphic point of view and is observed by Ali on his way
to the red-light district. It is therefore proposed as a constitutive part of the civil society, a ritual
that is part of the holiday. The second one is a mass demonstration in Istanbul, full of menacing
youths in masks, and initially framed through surveillance shots from the police helicopter (fig.
5). The visual importance accorded to the police underlines how political activism is perceived by
Turkish institutions as threatening and disturbing.25




                                                 Fig. 5

  The crossing of the borders between Europe and Turkey cannot bring, in the contemporary
reality of a global economy and institutional linkages, a euphoric celebration of multiplicity and
hybridization. The construction of the cultural bridge connecting Ayten and Susanne is painful,
and implies a reconsideration of the characters’ political stances. If Nejat, strengthened by culture
and education, and holding German-Turkish citizenship, can easily travel across the two borders
and settle down anywhere he likes, in Istanbul Lotte is made vulnerable by her “foreign” look and
inability to speak Turkish, and thus she becomes a victim of Turkey’s poverty. In a similar way,
Ayten is exposed to institutional control because of her illegal status in Germany, as also denoted by
her inability to speak German, and she becomes a victim of European institutions and legislations.
  The female characters’ fight against the position of victim that they are forced into can only
partially succeed.26 The Edge of Heaven does not take a simplistic position in the debate on
citizenship, international relations, multiculturalism, and global economy. The frequent border
crossing between Germany and Turkey, visualized through the airports, on the one hand proposes
a traditional perception of the geographical and institutional borders across nations and their
citizens. On the other hand, it makes explicit the cultural interrelations connecting and constructing
the two spaces, and their mutual dependency.

                                                                                                      59
Ilaria De Pascalis

The “idyllic chronotope” of Turkish Heimat

  In a similar fashion, Almanya openly interrogates the double German-Turkish citizenship
in contemporary society; but its answers are more reassuring, as its objective seems to be the
homogenization of cultural differences proposed by liberal multiculturalism.27 As a comedy, it
proposes itself as film entertainment, made for the German market and eventually distributed
abroad.28 In fact, while The Edge of Heaven includes dialogue in German, English, and Turkish,
Almanya’s dialogue is exclusively in German,29 although a Turkish-language version has been
made for the Turkish community in Germany.
  Almanya refuses the problematization of values and cultures as painful, preferring instead to
exhibit the clash-hybridization of cultures and religions through the playful visualization of certain
characters’ dreams, nightmares, and fantasies. This refusal of the “realistic” style usually associated
with social-problem films,30 both in the past and the present, is one of Almanya’s most interesting
formal choices. According to Hamid Naficy, Turkish transnational cinema traditionally proposes a
claustrophobic representation of a gendered space.31 By contrast, in Almanya even the nightmares
are portrayed in an ironic fashion, while the film’s spatial representation is characterized by the
presence of landscapes and outdoor settings. Moreover, no space is forbidden to any of the Turkish-
German characters, neither in Germany nor in their paradoxically unknown Heimat, Turkey.32
  At a narrative level, Almanya depicts a common phenomenon among the old guest workers and
their families: spending the holidays in their homeland. If Turkey is repeatedly defined by the
German word Heimat by the grandfather Hüseyin – in an ironic reversal of the tradition33 – it is
also depicted as an exotic space to be discovered by the second-generation members of the family,
Canan and Cenk. Germany is presented as a familiar place, where there is no need for spatial
contextualization. Turkey instead is visualized through many full shots framing the landscape,
punctuated by Turkish flags and minarets. This Heimat is natural and maternal, a site for the
lost past, and filled with a sense of belonging: Turkey is a receptive land, where everybody can
feel at ease.34 Turkey therefore corresponds to the “idyllic chronotope,” the visualization of an
imagined homeland in Hamid Naficy’s “accented” cinema.35 This natural space is characterized
even in contemporary times by its backwardness, but also by the beauty of its landscapes (fig. 6).
The “idyllic” representation is particularly evident in the visualization of flashbacks, when Canan
narrates the story of the family to Cenk. While Turkey is dominated by a yellow sunlight, the
host land is initially grey and obscure. Only after the whole family moves to the new land does
Germany become cozy and even sunny.




                                                 Fig. 6


60
                                                       Transnational Subjects in a Multiple Europe

  The photographic manipulation of light is not the only strategy to enhance the constructed and
private quality of the past. Almanya proposes an interesting relation between archival documentary
footage about Germany’s economic miracle, fantastic images, images from dreams or nightmares,
and memorial images. All of these levels intertwine, underlining the personal dimension of the
shared public past. The archival footage celebrating the German economic miracle – and the
role of migrant workers in it – is connoted as an epic narration, not as a documentary. It is part
of a fairytale about Hüseyin’s social ascent. On the other hand, Turkey is described, in Canan’s
words and in Cenk’s visualized fantasies, as an uncorrupted, traditional world. Germany is more
multifaceted, as it can be the land of the future and of consumer pleasures (see Muhamed’s dreams
about Coke, fig. 7), but it is also a place of imposition of different traditions, as shown in Hüseyin’s
nightmare about the Nazi employee at the migration office, and in Muhamed’s nightmare about
the zombie-Jesus (fig. 8).




                                                 Figs. 7-8

   In this reconstruction, history is a shared experience, where the personal level directly corresponds to
the construction of a multicultural society, without conflicts or oppositions. The most important sequence
in this sense is the one showing the ceremony “Deutschland sagt danke,” celebrated by Chancellor
Angela Merkel on 1 October 2008. Even though the Samdereli sisters have stated that they only find it
interesting to show this ceremony because they are narrating the migration history of a guest worker,36
this finale heavily contributes to the idea of pacification in the history of migration workers in Europe.
“Deutschland Sagt Danke,” meant that German institutions officially recognized the role of guest workers
in the economic development of the 1960s. However, the discourse formulated by Hüseyin, and repeated
by Cenk, returns the thanksgiving to these German institutions. Hüseyin is grateful because Germany
has given to the Turkish people the possibility to migrate and construct a better life for themselves and
their families. Almanya hence proposes an ideal society, where host institutions give everyone the same
chance to improve their condition through hard work and respect for the law.
   Both of these films are exemplary of wider trends in contemporary European cinema. The Edge
of Heaven refers to art cinema, addressing a transnational audience and adhering to some formal
solutions that emerge in other narrations pertaining to world cinema as well. Its aesthetics and style
significantly intertwine on the local and the global levels, interrogating the problematic identities
deriving from worldwide power relations. Almanya is more attentive to the national dimension;
it does not differentiate among regional aspects, but enhances institutional multiculturalism. Yet,
both films address the changes in geopolitical assets that derive from globalization, interrogate
victimization and marginalization as well as a more positive hybridization, and productively
compare cultural positions and different discourses across national borders.


                                                                                                        61
Ilaria De Pascalis

1    Regarding vacillating borders in Europe, see Étienne Balibar, The Borders of Europe, in Pheng Cheah,
     Bruce Robbins (eds.), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, University of Minnesota
     Press, Minneapolis 1998, pp. 216-229.
2    The reference here is to Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso, London 1983.
3    It is not possible to investigate here the complex networks of identities and positions, in relation to
     hegemonic discourses about migration or multiculturalism, and their representation in the European cin-
     ema. A few volumes have been dedicated to this issue, some of which have a productive comparative
     approach. For instance, see: Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, Am-
     sterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2005; Luisa Rivi, European Cinema After 1989: Cultural Identity
     and Transnational Production, Palgrave Macmillan, London-New York 2007; Daniela Berghan, Claudia
     Sternberg (eds.), European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe,
     Palgrave Macmillan, London-New York 2010.
4    For an analysis of national and European funds of migrant cinema, see Anne Jäckel, State and Other
     Funding for Migrant, Diasporic and World Cinemas in Europe, in Daniela Berghan, Claudia Sternberg
     (eds.), European Cinema in Motion, cit., pp. 76-95.
5    Thomas Elsaesser, Film Festival Networks: The New Topographies of Cinema in Europe, in Id., European
     Cinema, cit., p. 82. For the international distribution of The Edge of Heaven, see the national specification
     of the film’s revenues, available on the website http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=intl&id=
     edgeofheaven.htm, last visit 30 September 2013.
6    Idem, p. 83.
7    See Sabine Hake, Barbara Mennel (eds.), Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds,
     and Screens, Berghahn, New York-Oxford 2012.
8    See Noah Isenberg, “Fatih Akin’s Cinema of Intersections,” in Film Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 4, Summer
     2011, pp. 53-61.
9    It is interesting to notice that it received distribution support from the European Cinema Support Fund
     Eurimages. See www.coe.int/dg4/eurimages/default_en.asp, last visit 30 September 2013.
10   See Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema as World Cinema: A New Beginning?, in European Cinema,
     cit., pp. 485-513. See also the anthology: Rosalind Galt, Karl Schoonover (eds.), Global Art Cinema:
     New Theories and Histories, Oxford University Press, New York 2010.
11   See for instance Babel (Alejandro González Iñarritu, 2006) or the TV series Touch (2012-2013). On the
     complex geopolitical scale produced by “world cinema,” see Kathleen Newman, Notes on Transnational
     Film Theory: Decentered Subjectivity, Decentered Capitalism, in Nataša Ďurovičová, Kathleen Newman
     (eds.), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, Routledge, New York-London 2010, pp. 3-11.
12   Rey Chow, The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work, Duke
     University Press, Durham 2006, p. 62.
13   Idem, p. 88.
14   Idem, pp. 68-69.
15   I refer to the idea of verisimilitude and realism “as a relationship between text, reality and audience that
     changes as does the culture in which it operates” (Louis Bayman, Melodrama as Realism in Italian Neo-
     realism, in Lúcia Nagib, Cecilia Mello [eds.], Realism and the Audiovisual Media, Palgrave Macmillan,
     Basingstoke-New York 2009, p. 47). For the use of a magical realist perspective in Almanya, see also
     Daniela Berghan, Far-Flung Families in Film: The Diasporic Family in Contemporary European Cine-
     ma, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2013, p. 70.
16   For an analysis of contemporary cinema whose narrative plays games with the audience, see Thomas
     Elsaesser, The Mind-Game Film, in Warren Buckland (ed.), Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Con-
     temporary Cinema, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester 2009, pp. 13-41.
17   See Allan Cameron, Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema, Palgrave Macmillan, Bas-
     ingstoke-New York 2008.
18   Regarding postcolonial temporality, see Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge, Lon-
     don-New York 1994.
19   Ibrahim Sirkeci, Jeffrey H. Cohen, Pinar Yazgan, “Turkish Culture of Migration: Flows between Turkey


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     and Germany, Socio-Economic Development and Conflict,” in Migration Letters, vol. 9, no. 1, January
     2012, pp. 33-46.
20   Rosa Linda Fregoso, MeXicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands, Univer-
     sity of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 2003, p. 18.
21   Idem, pp. 25-27.
22   Ella Shohat, Robert Stam, Introduction, in Id. (eds.), Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnation-
     al Media, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick 2003, pp. 7-8.
23   On the diplomatic and political relations between Turkey and the European Union, see Elena Baracani,
     Unione Europea e democrazia in Turchia, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2008.
24   Fatih Akin has declared that Turkey is always something foreign to his characters. Quoted by Rob Burns,
     “On the Streets and On the Road: Identity in Transit in Turkish-German Travelogues on Screen,” in New
     Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, vol. 7, no. 1, 2009, p. 16. See also Daniela Berghan, “No Place
     Like Home? Or Impossible Homecomings in the Films of Fatih Akin,” in New Cinemas: Journal of Con-
     temporary Film, vol. 4, no. 3, 2006, pp. 141-157.
25   Rob Burns, “On the Streets and on the Road,” cit., p. 18.
26   It is not possible to fully develop here the gender issues implied by the film’s victimization of the female
     characters; the debate around globalization, transnationalism, and feminist practices cannot be summa-
     rized in a few lines. For essential references and the reconstruction of the relations between feminist film
     theory, gender studies, and global feminism, see Veronica Pravadelli, “Cinema e Feminist/Gender studies
     oggi: percorsi molteplici tra teoria e storia,” in Imago: Studi di cinema e media, Cinema e Feminist/Gen-
     der Studies oggi. Nuove prospettive dal 2000 (edited by Veronica Pravadelli and Ilaria A. De Pascalis),
     vol. 3, no. 6, 2012, pp. 9-21.
27   Many theorists have criticized liberal multiculturalism; see for example Minoo Moallem, Iain A. Boal,
     Multicultural Nationalism and the Poetics of Inauguration, in Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcón, Minoo
     Moallem (eds.), Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State,
     Duke University Press, Durham-London 1999, pp. 243-263.
28   For the distribution of Almanya, see the national specification of the film’s revenues, available on the website
     http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/intl/?page=&country=IT&id=_fALMANYAWILLKOMME01,
     last visit 30 September 2013.
29   It is interesting to notice how, in the narration of the past, the Turkish characters speak German correctly,
     while the German characters use a German-like gibberish.
30   For a discussion on nationalism, realism, and cinema, see Francesco Pitassio, Making the Nation Come
     Real: Neorealism/Nation: A Suitable Case for Treatment, in Ansgar Nüning, Vera Nüning, Birgit Neu-
     mann (eds.), The Aesthetics and Politics of Cultural Worldmaking, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier
     2010, pp. 21-36.
31   Hamid Naficy, Phobic Spaces and Liminal Panics: Independent Transnational Film Genre, in Ella Sho-
     hat, Robert Stam (eds.), Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media, cit., pp. 213-218.
32   See Daniela Berghan, Far-Flung Families in Film, cit., pp. 70-71.
33   For the concept of Heimat and its role in the foundation of national and European identities, see David
     Morley, Kevin Robins, Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes, and Cultural Bound-
     aries, Routledge, London-New York 1995, particularly Chapter 5, No Place Like Heimat: Images of
     Home(Land), pp. 85-104.
34   See Daniela Berghan, Far-Flung Families in Film, cit., p. 73.
35   Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton University Press,
     Princeton-Oxford 2001, p. 155.
36   See their interventions during the press conference at the Berlin International Film Festival, available on
     the website http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/almanya-willkommen-in-deutschland/biff-press-confe-
     rence, last visit 30 September 2013.




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