Alamanya: Willkommen in Deutschland
101 min. | Director Yasemin Şamdereli | 2011 Germany | German with German subtitles | PAL
Six-year-old Cenk Yılmaz is faced with the question of his identity when he is not voted into either the Turkish or the German soccer team at his German school. As the son of Ali, who is of Turkish origin, and his German wife Gabi, he does not speak Turkish.
At a family celebration, his grandmother Fatma announces that he has recently been naturalized in Germany, and grandfather Hüseyin explains that he has bought a house in his home village in Turkey that he wants to use as a summer residence. In order to renovate it, he decides that the entire family will go there for the holidays.
Parallel to the background story, 22-year-old Canan tells her cousin Cenk the story of her young grandfather in short episodes. He fell in love with Fatma from the neighboring village, kidnapped and married her, and then came as 1,000,001 guest workers to Germany during the labor shortages of the 1960s. After some time he brought his wife and children Veli, Muhamed and Leyla from his home village to Alamanya. Full of prejudices and each with their own dreams and expectations of the foreign country, the family had to contend with numerous difficulties in adjusting to the unfamiliar language, culture and way of life. Finally, Ali was the fourth child and completed the young family.
In the present time, the extended family flies to Turkey and sets out in a minibus on the way to Hüseyin's home village in Eastern Anatolia in order to visit the newly acquired house. During the long journey, the personal circumstances and problems of the family members become apparent. Hüseyin recently received an invitation to an official thank-you event for guest workers at Bellevue Palace, where he will speak in the presence of Chancellor Angela Merkel. He is supposed to give a speech and thinks about how to deal with it. Fatma doesn't really want to live in Turkey anymore and disapproves of Hüseyin's purchase of the house. Veli's wife wants a divorce, Leyla only smokes secretly for reasons of decency and Muhamed has lost his job. Unbeknownst to her mother Leyla, Canan has a British boyfriend and is also pregnant by him. Hüseyin guesses Canan's pregnancy and reacts with understanding.
On the further journey, Hüseyin suddenly dies. Since he last had German citizenship, the Turkish authorities refuse to allow him to be buried in an Islamic cemetery. The family therefore takes his body to his village and buries it in local soil. Cenk sees his relatives of their current age and at the same time their younger counterpart from the time they immigrated in the 1960s gathered around the grave. The house Hüseyin bought turns out to be a ruin. Muhamed decides to stay in the village and rebuild it. The rest of the family returns to Germany. Finally, little Cenk gives the speech to Chancellor Merkel that Hüseyin had prepared.