ABSTRACT
As the European Council debated Turkey’s entry into the European Union (EU) in 1999, German-Turkish director Fatih Akin produced his second feature, In July (2000), which is as much concerned with German and Turkish identity in the EU as with that of other immigrant groups. In his much-awaited follow-up to his crime-genre debut success Short Sharp Shock (1998), Akin—himself a child of Turkish immigrants to Germany and a very successful practitioner of crossover cinematic practices—decided to playfully revert the expectations put on him by the critical community. With the summer romance film In July, he changed milieus while pursuing his interest in genre cinema but surprised many with his unusual choice of characters and the film’s mix of comedy, romance, and road movie genres. The film garnered a lukewarm reception upon release and was written off by most critics as a kitschy, yet sweet, romance. Unlike Short Sharp Shock, popular press coverage of In July did not address any of the political and social issues in the film, particularly when they concerned the topic of Turkish-German relations; this is perhaps due to Akin’s choice of “German” protagonists and the predominance of comedy in the film. However, the film is anything but ahistorical, and placed in its sociopolitical context, it can be understood as a film that responds to what most Europeans see as one of the main concerns in contemporary Europe—the populations that flow across their borders. Despite its lighthearted tone, Akin’s film is very much concerned with the shifting representation and meaning of borders in a globalized world that is so often characterized by economic, political, and social integration.
