Jakob Lichtmann

In 1970, Melek Tez came to Berlin as a young worker from Turkey. A confident woman, she first countered racist resentments and remarks with irony and wit. Jokingly, she even referred to herself as a "Kümmeltürkin", a derogatory German term for Turkish migrants. Yet after fourteen humiliating years, her fighting spirit has given way to resignation: Melek Tez is returning to Turkey. Blending documentary, interviews and re-enacted scenes, director Jeanine Meerapfel chronicles Melek Tez' life experience.

"Had it not been for Hitler, I would have been born a German-Jewish child, more German than Jewish, in a small village in the South of Germany. But as it happened, I was born in Argentina, my mothertongue is Spanish. I came to Germany 17 years ago." It is here, where author and director Jeanine Meerapfel starts searching for her own Jewish identity, being confronted time and time again with Federal Republic reality.