Kleine Freiheit is a 2003 film about the friendship (and later relationship) between two teenage boys who are illegal immigrants in Germany. The movie was critically well-received, particularly because of its accurate depiction of the Turkish–Kurdish conflict and the acting prowess of the nonprofessional actors. Cagdas Bozkurt won an acting prize at the Ankara film festival, while the movie won a viewers’ choice award in Istanbul. Kleine Freiheit, the German title of the movie, is a wordplay on Große Freiheit (Great Freedom), the rather famous name of a street in the red light St. Pauli district, in Hamburg, where the plot is set.

A handsome boy on the brink of adulthood finds his quest to become a man leading him down a dangerous path in director Maria Solrun’s dark coming-of-age tale. Jargo (Constantin von Jascheroff) has everything a young man could want; a lavish home in Saudi Arabia and more money than he knows what to do with. When his father (Udo Kier) suddenly and unexpectedly commits suicide, however, Jargo is forced to relocate to a Berlin housing project, where he strikes up a friendship with young Kamil (Oktay Özdemir), a low-rent Turkish criminal …