Diasporic Cinema: The Representation of Immigrants in Post-2000 German Films

Abstract

Migrant laborers began coming to Germany in the 1960’s and caused various transformations in Germany’s demographic and cultural structure. This migration movement has been addressed and represented on the silver screen multiple times, making cinema one of the most important mass communication devices of the 21st century. This study examines how diaspora directors have approached migration in cinema after 2000 and analyzes the diasporic elements in Turkish-German cinema along with fundamental motivations and dynamics. To examine labor migration in cinema from a historical perspective, changes in migrant representations in German cinema until the 2000s are also discussed. Yasemin Şamdereli‘s 2011 film „Wilkommen in Deutschland“ (Welcome to Germany), Feo Aladağ‘s 2010 film „Die Fremde“ (When We Leave), and Fatih Akın‘s 2017 film „Aus dem Nichts“ (In the Fade) are analyzed using Hofstede’s “Cultural Onion” method and the sociological film analysis method.

Keywords

• diaspora
• migrant cinema
• german cinema
• turkish-german cinema
• accented cinema