(Germany/Turkey/2007/directed by Fatih Akin)

The New York Times’ A.O. Scott: “There are six principal characters: two mothers, two daughters, a father and a son.... In the course of this extraordinary film by writer-director Fatih Akin (which won the best screenplay award in Cannes last year) children are lost, lost parents are never found, and generational and geographical distances grow wider. Yet at the same time, as the lives of the characters cross and entwine, there is a sense of human connections becoming stronger... There are plenty of surprises and revelations, but the main revelation is the film itself. By the end you know the characters in it so well that you can’t believe you’ve seen the movie only once, yet on a second viewing it seems completely new. And that may be because the world they inhabit is immediately recognizable — until we get to heaven, it’s where we live — and like no place you’ve been before. (122 min.)

“So full of life that it leaves you breathless.”  -Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal