Tevfik Baser's first film, 40 Square Meters of Germany (PFA '87), was a canny portrait of an incarcerated woman, set entirely within the walls of the Hamburg flat where the Turkish bride Turna was kept captive by her paranoid husband. Farewell to False Paradise takes up where 40 Square Meters leaves off: its heroine, Elif (portrayed by the marvelous Turkish actress Zuhal Olcay), is sentenced to six years in a West German prison for the murder of her abusive husband. Separated from her children and from all that is familiar, and speaking not a word of German, in prison Elif truly is a stranger in a strange land. But free from the social pressures of her own milieu, in particular the excruciating dictates of her husband, father and brothers, Elif finds her life opening up anew in prison, where friendships with the other inmates give her insight and courage. Then, to her horror, Elif learns that she is to be deported and tried in a Turkish court. In the context of a "women behind bars" setting, Baser is concerned with internal prisons-and internal reprieves. As in the earlier film, he observes one woman's struggle to make her way out of the hell of a false paradise.