As difficult as the term German-Turks might be (that's the social scientist speaking..) and as unapropriate this might be to approach a very talented young filmmaker, I can't help but introduce him here under that label, too, considering the fact that the few people who actually do talk about him put him in the same drawer as Fatih Akin because of their 'same' background...
Well, I like Fatih Akin, too, very much, I have to admit, but besides their common descent (Akin's parents are from the black sea as you can learn in his documentary We forgot to go back, where Aslan's parents are from exactly I can't tell and don't care) they have nothing in common, neither in style nor in temperament nor from socialisation: Akin is from Hamburg, Arslan from Berlin. Whereas Akin's movies are usually like steamtrains or a fist pointed at your stomach, fairytales from a St Pauli Street Kid full of irony and sarcasm - Arslan's movies are quiet, reduced, minimalist and always rather as if the world was seen through a blurry window, from a distance, even when you come closer to the protagonists as in any of akin's movies there will always be the feeling of never being really able to 'grasp' them. There are other directors like him in Berlin, like Angela Schanelec for example - but they all have something rather 'french' to them: usually you don't laugh out loud and although people themselves move fast, everything seems to happen in slow-mo...

Be it in Der schoene Tag/ The beautiful Day, Kardeşler/Geschwister (Siblings) or Dealer which all of them take place in Berlin Kreuzberg, a Kreuzberg that's speaking of a district shaped by long time migration on the one hand, but far from the endlessly created clichees around it.

www.german-cinema.de/app/fil...view.php

Now this year Arslan seems to have made his 'Istanbul/Turkey' documentary just as Fatih Akın had made his one (the much praised crossing the bridge, on istanbul music scene - i won't say that i don't admire this one myself, too, one of the featured singers being a close friend of my flatmate :): Aus der Ferne/From a distance. And in a way that's striking: Akın again crossing something, cultures, the bosphorus, the east and the west and having a huge laugh on it all - and arslan: still. curious. open but keeping the distance. With Istanbul as a multiple parting point to explore a Turkey Arslan himself is rather a stranger, too, although having studied two years at Ankara.

Having not had the opportunity to see this one yet at this year's berlin film festival, because İ just wasn't there, I am still looking forward to it and recommend it to you as it was recommended to me.

www.signandsight.com/features/606.html