HEAD-ON

"...hopeful film...their troubles filed under immigration and assimilation. Their tribulations are at once specific and universal, by turns grimly funny and darkly ironic. Set principally against the grubby environs of working-class Hamburg, in dives and derelict apartments, the film has a terrific sense of place. The city's grubbiness works a vivid contrast to the visions of Turkey that flicker throughout the film. Istanbul looks beautiful, but then so, too....wreck of an apartment, where anarchy and the freedom it promises linger as stubbornly as the smell of stale beer and cigarettes."