Like any average teenager, seventeen year old Murat is innocent and bored and just a little bit confused. He's also a Turk living in Berlin, and a gay man trying to come out in the tradition-bound neighborhood of his immigrant family. Caught between two worlds which have no use for his kind, Murat's search for belonging leads him to Lola, reigning queen of the gay Turkish demimonde and a strange cast of cross-dressers, street hustlers, old German aristocrats and young neo-Nazi punks.
As Murat is drawn into this new and exciting world that exists in the shadows of Berlin's hip Kreuzberg he discovers that the enigmatic Lola is also his brother. While trying to come to terms with his family's hidden past, Lola is brutally murdered, and Bili, Lola's boyfriend, is consumed with grief and desperate to avenge Lola's murder. But he needs Murat to do it, and again Murat finds himself caught between two worlds, forced to take a side.
"Searing
and taut. Surrounded by uniformly excellent acting and deep, classy
photography by Chris Squires, Ataman's writing and filmmaking
has a literariness that also finds the sadness in the souls he's
using as archetypes."
- Wesley Morris, San Francisco Examiner
"An
astonishing first feature!"
- David Ehrenstein, SF Weekly & New Times