ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the representation of female ethnic subjectivity and desire in German cinema, focusing on the female protagonist in Fatih Akin's Head On. A woman originating from a lower-social-class milieu, she attempts suicide again and again for reasons that the film conceals from the beginning. Akin's award-winning film Gegen die Wand offers a cast of yearning characters: some lonely, some lost, some in love, and some whose emotions find expression through actions. McEwan assesses a subject that also lends itself to a discussion about cinema. In their artistic experimentation, filmmakers such as Akin and Tom McCarthy capture, in Zoe Heller's words, the moral tangle of private self and the outer world. The chapter argues that if Head On is read within the Islamophobic context of cultural racism and xenophobia, it provides insight into current forms of life but also reflects on the individual's moral struggle against racialized debates over citizenship and belonging.
