April Children (Aprilkinder)

Yüksel Yavuz (1998)

Germany

Genre: Drama

Following his 1994 documentary, My Father, the Guest Worker (Mein Vater, der Gastarbeiter), April Children is Yüksel Yavuz's first feature film. Set in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, the film provides a multi-faceted picutre of the conflicts and problems experienced by a Kurdish family in Germany. The brothers Cem and Mehmet live with their sister Dilan and their immigrant parents in Germany. Mehmet drifts off into the world of crime while Dilan skilfully avoids her parents' strict moral codes. The film's protagonist is Cem, thirty-something with a menial job in a meat factory who, obeying his family's wishes, is about to get married to a Kurdish cousin from a village back home in Turkey. Still a virgin, he is taken to a Turkish brothel and falls in love with Kim, a German prostitute. She reciprocates his feelings and even wants Cem to make a choice between his bride-to-be and her. Cem, like all the other passive male characters in the film, passively accepts his fate and drifts into an arranged marriage. 

Posted by Daniela Berghahn on 19 Apr 2006 •

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