Yara

Like Arslan's first feature Passages, this fable about loss of cultural identity is harsh, uncompromising and sometimes hard to take. Hülya (Reynaud), a Turkish girl raised in Germany by her divorced father, is taken back to Turkey for what she thinks is a vacation - to find herself dumped on her uncle and effectively imprisoned. The first half details her attempted escape, heading for the German border by any means available and trampling on every Turkish/Islamic tradition she encounters en route. The second, following her inevitable breakdown, shows her sojourn in an appalling mental hospital. Himself an émigré in Germany, Arslan knows whereof he speaks: all the hysteria, neuroses and self-hatred of 'emigrant rage' are here, softened only by the seductive vision of rural Turkey and by serene, surreal dream sequences which get inside Hülya's dysfunctional ego.