The Other Side of the River

One’s own family is not always easy. Protagonist Akosua is queer, Ghanaian-German, polyamorous, and she wants a child. Her friend, director Mala Reinhardt, accompanies her for three years on her journey through Germany and Ghana in search of her identity and belonging in a multicultural context.

In conversations with her parents Yıldız and Mustafa as well as her brothers Taner and Onur, she goes on a painful journey into the past. Political persecution of the Alevi-Kurdish family in Turkey, the flight to Europe in 1989, several racist attacks, depression and excessive demands on the parents – the effects on the three siblings are different. Dealing with the experiences and strokes of fate causes different reactions in them. Bektaş quickly realizes that the uncertainty about Taner’s fate in Turkey is only a reflection of her life experience as a family in exile.