Thomas, a young German, escaping the brother of a Turkish manhe has accidentally killed, seeks shelter in a nearby apartment only todiscover that it is the residence of the victim's extended family.Luckily, Turkish tradition demands that anyone entering a house forrefuge must be protected. While Thomas holes up in their home, the spicyBerlin in Berlin becomes a seething microcosm of troubled ethnicrelationships. The differing degrees of assimilation among the familymembers engages both tension and unexpected humor. Murtuz, the brother,is filled with rage over the social inequities of contemporary Berlin,the now widowed daughter-in-law Dilber quietly waits for her own flight,the family matriarch looks on with ageless bemusement, and Thomas, theobliging young man, begins his study of the Koran. With a flair for thecurious camera angle, director Çetin has taken an absurdistpremise and crafted a vividly real portrait of an exiled people copingwith uneasy passions.-Steve Seid