Year of release: 1990
The story of a family who leave their poor Turkish village and six of their seven children behind, seeking a more prosperous life in Switzerland. Together with their youngest son, they embark on a hazardous journey across the Alps.
Year of release: 2005
Culture-clash comedy which centres on Bruce Lee fan and young Turkish hip-hopper Ibo, who lives in Hamburg and dreams of making the first-ever German kung-fu film.
Filed under: Fathers | Inter-ethnic romance | Mothers | Turkish German | Wedding / Marriage
Year of release: 2012
Kuma (courtesy of Wega Film)
When Ayşe celebrates her wedding almost everyone in her Turkish village believes her to have married Hasan who is just a few years her senior. But in fact, she is sent to Vienna as Hasan’s father Mustafa’s second wife. She arrives in Austria and receives a mixed welcome from her new family. At first, Mustafa’s children, some of whom are older than Ayşe, turn their back on the girl. Only Fatma, Mustafa’s wife of many years who is now dying of cancer, seems genuinely pleased: now she can be assured of a good successor to tend to her husband, to whom she has been a loyal and obedient Muslim wife.
A special friendship evolves between the two different women but this relationship is soon put to the test when the family has to face a stroke of fate.
Director Umut Dag’s description of the complex microcosm of a Turkish family living in Vienna displays a great deal of sensitivity in a work that explores the relationship between the old and the new, loyalty and friendship, and is not afraid to broach deep-seated emotions.
Filed under: Daughters | Fathers | Mothers | Wedding / Marriage
Year of release: 2002
Toula and Ian's wedding in My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Toula Portokalos, the daughter of a Greek restaurant owner in Chicago turns from an ugly duckling into a swan when she falls in love with Ian Miller, a WASP high school teacher. Inter-ethnic romance is depicted as a transformative and mutually enriching experience. The couple overcome their parents' initial reservations and Ian is welcomed into the family circle of the large Portokalos family after he has converted to Greek Orthodox faith. Toula's and Ian's romance culminates in a lavish Greek wedding. As a wedding present Toula's father gives the young couple a house, right next to his, where the happy couple start a family and continue the Greek family tradition.
Filed under: Ethnic food | Fathers | Inter-ethnic romance | Mothers | Wedding / Marriage
Year of release: 2001
Anam is a 40-year-old traditional Turkish wife and mother who lives with her family in Germany where she works as a cleaning lady.
Filed under: Mothers | Turkish German
Year of release: 2002
Gigi returns to Solino and marries Ada
Solino is the name of a small Italian town and the place where the film begins and ends. From here, the Amato family – consisting of father Romano, mother Rosa and their sons Gigi and Giancarlo – set off in search of a new and economically more prosperous life in Germany. The film essentially depicts the experience of Italian guest workers who were ‘invited’ by the German government in the 1950s and sixties to contribute with their labour force to the economic miracle.
Filed under: Fathers | History | Journey | Mothers | Wedding / Marriage
Year of release: 2001
The film tells the story of Railla, born in a remote village in Algeria and adopted by a Swiss couple shortly after her birth. Aged nineteen, the beautiful Railla is intent on finding her mother Keltoum in order to confront her about having abandoned her.
Filed under: Daughters | Journey | Maghrebi French | Mothers | Secrets
Year of release: 2007
Courtesy of Corazón International
The film traces the journeys of sons and daughters, mothers and fathers between Turkey and Germany, searching for each other. In the process, families fall apart through conflicts and sudden deaths and, in the end, new familial bonds are forged.
Filed under: Fathers | Journey | Mothers | Queer diaspora | Turkish German
Year of release: 1997
Jackie Jones, a thirteen-year-old teenager of mixed racial origin, is growing up in Leicester in 1972 with her single white mother, who is rather too preoccupied with her own unhappy life to show any interest or affection towards her teenage daughter. When Jackie's sports teacher at school notices that her potential to become an athlete, her life promises to change for the better.
Filed under: Coming of age | Daughters | Mothers
Year of release: 2007
Family drama about Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, a Bengali couple who emigrate from Calcutta to New York in the late 1970s, where their two children, Gogol and Sonia, are born.
Filed under: Fathers | Inter-ethnic romance | Mothers | Sons | South Asian diaspora | Wedding / Marriage