No place like home? Or impossible homecomings in the films of Fatih Akin

Abstract

Fatih Akin, one of the most prominent directors of contemporary German-

Unsettling the metaphor: The failure of liberal hybridity in Fatih Akin’s Crossing The Bridge

“…This critical consensus has two main strands. On the one hand, Akin is now regarded as a skillful auteur in Germany with a creative potential to rejuvenate the New German Cinema (Berghahn 2009). On the other hand, his oeuvre is frequently described through categories that connote a surpassing of national boundaries.…”

“…On the other hand, his oeuvre is frequently described through categories that connote a surpassing of national boundaries. 'Cinema of intersections', 'accented cinema', 'diasporic cinema', 'transnational cinema' and 'cinema of hybridity' are all formulations that film scholars call upon to define Akin's work and highlight its recurring themes of border-crossing and cross-fertilization (Berghahn 2006(Berghahn , 2009Burns 2007;Isenberg 2011;Mennel 2002). His films are praised as embodiments of a new kind of cinema that moves away from a 'cinema of duty' 1 towards 'a cinema that negotiates transnationality in a playful way' (Mennel 2002: 136;Berghahn 2009).…”

“…'Cinema of intersections', 'accented cinema', 'diasporic cinema', 'transnational cinema' and 'cinema of hybridity' are all formulations that film scholars call upon to define Akin's work and highlight its recurring themes of border-crossing and cross-fertilization (Berghahn 2006(Berghahn , 2009Burns 2007;Isenberg 2011;Mennel 2002). His films are praised as embodiments of a new kind of cinema that moves away from a 'cinema of duty' 1 towards 'a cinema that negotiates transnationality in a playful way' (Mennel 2002: 136;Berghahn 2009). This latter is appreciated for breaking down predictable binaries, rendering visible the 'pleasures of hybridity ' and 'open[ing] up a "third space" between the celebration and the denial of otherness' (Burns 2007: 7;Berghahn 2009;Kosta 2010;Göktürk 2010b).…”

“…His films are praised as embodiments of a new kind of cinema that moves away from a 'cinema of duty' 1 towards 'a cinema that negotiates transnationality in a playful way' (Mennel 2002: 136;Berghahn 2009). This latter is appreciated for breaking down predictable binaries, rendering visible the 'pleasures of hybridity ' and 'open[ing] up a "third space" between the celebration and the denial of otherness' (Burns 2007: 7;Berghahn 2009;Kosta 2010;Göktürk 2010b).…”

“…Indeed, what I would call a liberal-pluralist interpretation of hybridity that conceives it primarily in terms of 'fusion', 'connection', 'mosaic', 'mélange', 'peaceful coexistence' and 'polyphony' has come to dominate the way the film has been talked and thought about (Burns 2009;Berghahn 2006;Göktürk 2010aGöktürk , 2010bJafaar 2006;Kosta 2010). Through this lens, Crossing the Bridge is celebrated for both underscoring 'the multicultural heritage of Turkey' and for demonstrating how 'hyphenated and minoritarian literatures, films and other cultural formations negotiate "multiple and simultaneous affiliations and disaffiliations"' and thus disrupt fixed and totalized conceptualizations of identity and belonging (Berghahn 2009: 4).…”