Contemporary German cinema is involved in a thoughtful and often fascinating exploration of Germany's foreign minorities-a movement ushered in by R. W. Fassbinder's Ali, Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and Werner Schroeter's Palermo or Wolfsburg (1980). Yasemin-the official West German entry to the Academy Awards, and winner of the Silver Plaque for best screenplay at the Chicago Film Festival '88-concerns the next generation, the sons and daughters of guest workers, who are that much more integrated into German life, yet still a world apart. The film tells of a forbidden love between Yasemin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants in Hamburg-Altona, and a German lad, Jan. From habit, Yasemin coolly brushes off Jan's first attempts to catch her eye, but the imagination and humor with which he tries to win her are hard to ignore. At the same time, Yasemin witnesses her normally cheerful and adored father metamorphose into a despot out of fear for his daughter's honor. The chaos of her conflicting emotions is foreign territory enough for Jan, who learns of a new culture within the old.