A CRITICAL STUDY / BİR ANALİZ : FATİH A KIN'S GEGEN DIE WAND (2004): ETHNICITY AS PERFORMANCE

Fatih Akın's film Gegen die Wand /Head-On (2004j is a mu İti-layered visual narrative that poses questions about the notions of cultural boundaries, borders, ethnic specificity, national identities, and the issues of sexuality and gender relations within the context of minority discourse. The tragic love story of two Turkish immigrants makes the film thematically revolutionary, because, instead of dealing with the voiceless Turkish subaltern, who is gendered, displaced, and cnished by double oppression, Akin seems to be enjoying the "pleasures of hybridity" and exhibiting, in transnational spaces, the everyday reality of bilingual Turkish-Germail characters with dual cultural backgrounds. In this context, the film is usually discussed within the genre conventions of mi gr an t/di asp oric/acœn ted/minority/transnational cinema. This essay discusses how Akin represents the ambiguity and the fragmented nature of hybridity and the interstitial exjierience of minority identities by foregrounding intimate relationships.