Almanya: Welcome to Germany (2011)

The film tells the story of Turkish immigrants in Germany. How they changed and how they keep up with Turkey.

The film has fun, sadness, reality and a little pain. Really well filmed with back flashes to the beginning.

Fmovies: Heart-warming movie, who manages the balance between comedy and drama very well. It's a tribute to the first immigrants from Turkey to Germany and the difficulties they faced to adapt and built a life in a foreign environment and culture and how those facts forged the character of the third generation, their grandchildren.

The story is too familiar, i guess, to all the people of the southern countries that left them in the 60'ties to seek employment in the industries of the rich North: Germany, Belgium or even farther to the United States and Australia. At that time, the immigrants were needed, invited and welcome. One is tempted to compare to the current situation in Europe,who cannot support or welcome the todays immigrants anymore.

This film could have been easily a "heavy" one, but it avoids that trap. There is no deep analysis of the difficulties and the problems they dealt with there. Instead it has a light-hand, tender touch, dealing with both joy and sorrow, mourning and adaptation. It is as the young boy says at the end of the movie: "Life is the ups and downs". Music and bright color photography contribute in emphasizing that.

Very good direction, screenplay and excellent acting from all concerned. The little boy who is the last link in the family chain, the one for whom the story is told and who will in his turn re-tell it to his own descendants, is played by a very charismatic child actor, that will steal your heart.

Another great film from the Turkish film industry.

The movie plots on two opposite lines the story of Turk family on the way to Germany as foreign workers, and their way back to Turkey. The relationship between the Turkish guests and the German hosts are idealistically depicted - the Germans love their Turkish hard-workers (if things are so happy, why Turkey has been time and again declined from joining the European Union?), the Turkish family is completely modern - like a normal Westernized family : they react tolerantly to their young daughter who gets pregnant from a non-German guy (no word on the common and prevalent honor-killings among the Turks in Germany, no word on arranged marriage which is also the very common among Turks in Germany, etc.) I've been living many years in Germany, and the story this movie tells us is completely unconvincing.

As far as the artistic sides of the movie are concerned, it starts as a comedy and suddenly, with no seen reason, it turns into saccharine melodrama. The performance, the dialogs, the mimic and gestures reminded me of typical German TV commercials for Washing Powder, Yogurt, etc.

Almanya: Welcome to Germany fmovies. I rate it 4.7. The trailer is very promising, that's why me and my wife went to see it. Unfortunately the move stays on the surface. Many topics are referred, but after minutes the dialog swifts away to utter irrelevance. Sorry good have been good, but even for Anatolians/Turkish Folks the movie might be just too boring. Good points were the cinematography and the acting wasn't too bad, at least from most of the characters. I enjoyed shots from Anatolia and the scenery was nice. However you learn very little about their culture and soon the movie spins around boring dialogs and nonsense. They use a bi-lingual trick to get you into the perspective of the immigrants who understand no word. However - this idea gets boring fast. Then I could barely sit through long shots of whining, artificial laugh scenes and sometimes very bad acting. The script also did not satisfy, I could barely make out a leitmotif, something about a generation conflict and nostalgia of the older generation. Sorry, not convinced.

If you want to see a cool immigration comedy, I suggest 'L'Italien', a lot funnier and heavily underrated.

To be fair: who says that migration-related films cannot be positive, but have to be bleak and ripe with social criticism à la 'Into this World'? The idea to portray the arrival and gradual integration of a Turkish family in Germany without a speck of racism or aggravation could appear almost bold, given that such a subject matter almost invariably descends into the abysses of social or moral decay. Yet 'Almanya' attempts to be an uplifting, encouraging comedy of sorts, and obviously intends to highlight the positive aspects of integration. Religious matters are completely obliterated, women's issues are gently brushed aside, the entire story revolves around a family so intact, so void of disintegration and serious conflict that it could very well substitute for a Turkish Trapp family, if there was more singing.

Being so picture-perfect, the family (and the film) can never shake a whiff of artifice and dullness. Given its inclusion in this year's Berlin competition, and a fairly wide release for a domestic film, one cannot help but wonder if this isn't a German propaganda effort promoting integration to lesser satisfied migrants: Look, this is how easy you could make it for yourselves in our golden land of opportunity. Perceived as such, 'Almanya' becomes almost enjoyable as a parody of sorts. But if you're interested in how things really are for migrants in Germany, you're better off with Faith Akin's 'Head-on' and 'Short Sharp Shock', or Özgür Yildirim's 'Chiko'.

I went to see Almanya (the Turkish word for "Germany") expecting to see a movie on the level of e. g. "Süperseks" -- harmless, contrived and predictable. My girlfriend wanted to see it, and I'm smart enough to give in to her once in a while, it's called tactics. I was all the more surprised to see an insightful and witty film that plays with clichés but doesn't pander to them. The story of a family of three generations of Turkish immigrants is revealed through flashbacks -- how young Turkish lovers elope from Anatolia without ever having spoken to each other before: a quintessential story of couth romance, even though it is revealed later in the film that pregnancy also played a slight role in this development. I also liked the gadget that the Turks speak German while the Germans speak a sort of Teutonic gibberish: that way, the movie delivers some real insight how arriving in Germany must have felt like. And also the idea that the movie portrays the life of not the famous one-millionths, but of the one-million-and-first "guest worker". So, welcome to Almanya, enjoy your stay!