Year of release: 2004
South Wales, the present. Teenage single mother Leigh-Anne Williams lives in a council flat with her baby Rebecca. Her brother Gavin and their friends Stephen and Robbie store stolen goods there. She is not popular with her neighbours, especially the Turkish-born Hassan Osman, who lives with his daughter Julie.
Filed under: Black British | Crime | Mothers
Year of release: 2004
Referred to as British Boyz N The Hood, compared to Juice and Ratcatcher, inspired by Ken Loach's Kes, Saul Dibb's feature film debut Bullet Boy is the story of a futile attempt to break out of a criminal milieu that ends with the protagonist's killing.
Filed under: Black British | Coming of age | Crime | Mothers | Sons
Year of release: 2011
Verena S. Freytag's film centres on Pellin, a young single mother with three children living in a high-rise block in Berlin. She is of Turkish descent but her ethnicity is of no relevance to the story. Pellin tries to make ends meet as a tattoo artist but loses her job and is about to lose custody for her children when one of her children accidentally takes some ecstasy pills which Pellin's drug-dealing boyfriend left in the flat. Her last chance is a mother-child-cure on the Baltic sea in Germany.
Filed under: Crime | Mothers | Turkish German
Year of release: 1995
Ismael and Mouloud, two brothers of Maghrebi descent, make their way to Marseilles, from where the younger of the two is to be sent 'home' to his parents in North Africa.
Filed under: Coming of age | Crime | Journey | Maghrebi French
Year of release: 1999
Can and his girlfriend Jale live with their young daughter, Meral, in Berlin-Schöneberg. Can is a small-time dealer and errand-boy for drug boss Hakan, who has to keep his customers supplied within his narrowly staked out territory.
Filed under: Crime | Fathers | Turkish German
Year of release: 2002
Züli Aladag's feature film debut Elephant Heart is a coming-of-age story about a young boxer in the amateur league, who dreams of going professional but has to learn what sacrifices he has to make if he wants to reaslise his ambition. At the centre of the strory is Marco - played by Germany's rising star Daniela Brühl (Good Bye, Lenin! and The Edukators) - a young amateur boxer searching for his own identity.
Filed under: Coming of age | Crime | Fathers | Sons | Turkish German
Year of release: 2001
Alloune, a Senegalese tourist guide working in the History of Slavery Museum on the island of Goree, Senegal, decides to trace his ancestors’ routes, who were sold as slaves to the New World around 1800.
Filed under: Crime | Family memories | Inter-ethnic romance | Journey
Year of release: --
Set on a Hackney housing estate in East London, Sally El Hosaini's debut feature tells the story of two brothers, Rashid and Mo, whose parents migrated from Egypt to the UK. Rashid is involved in drug-dealing and deeply embroiled in gang culture. When his younger brother follows in his footsteps, he is severely wounded but ultimately survives. It also transpires that Rashid is gay and Mo finds it hard to come to terms with since he worships his older brother, whose sexual orientation seems to be incompatible with the idealised masculinity Rash seems to represent.
Year of release: 2006
Züli Aladag's controversial made-for-television film Rage imagines the encounter between a white middle-class German family and a young Turkish migrant, who intrudes into the family and terrorises them, as an escalation of violence that challenges the liberal values of the hegemonic family.
Filed under: Coming of age | Crime | Fathers | Patriarchy | Secrets | Sons | Turkish German
Year of release: 1985
Based on Mehdi Charef's novel of the same title, Charef's début feature film tells the story of Majid, a young beur, who lives with his family in one of the housing estates of the Parisian banlieue.
Filed under: Coming of age | Crime | Maghrebi French