An intense portrait of a young woman struggling to hold her ground in a society that casts her aside

The German Film Office is pleased to host a special screening of the award-winning film Elbow, followed by a conversation between director Aslı Özarslan, author Fatma Aydemir and Ela Genzen, Associate Professor of German at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Presented as part of the Goethe-Institut’s “Longing/Belonging” festival in North America. Please register to attend.

 
17-year-old Hazal is a Turkish-German teen living in Berlin and dreaming of a future outside of her parents’ bakery. Despite her best efforts to find an apprenticeship, her mediocre grades and numerous rejected applications leave her with few options. For her 18th birthday she wants to escape the everyday grind and hit the clubs with her friends. But the night’s celebration is cut short when the girls are turned away by a bouncer. On their way in the subway, they are harassed by a stranger and the situation escalates, with deadly consequences. Based on the award-winning novel Ellbogen by Fatma Aydemir, Aslı Özarslan’s debut feature is a skillfully crafted and intense portrait of a young woman struggling to hold her ground in a society that seems to cast her aside.

“Hazal is difficult to grasp in her youthful rebellion and defiance. Melia Kara lends a multi-layered authenticity to this character, who is often still childlike and then again so determined. We follow her through dark alleyways and into dimly lit rooms, driven by an impulsiveness that doesn’t know where to go. It is a harrowing film for which one wishes a happy ending—for the sake of Hazal and German society.” (epd Film)

Elbow premiered in the “Generations” section of 74th Berlinale and has won multiple awards since then, including the 2024 Frankfurter Buchmesse Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Ellbogen
Dir. Aslı Özarslan
Germany, 2024
86 min.
With Melia Kara, Jamilah Bagdach, Asya Utku, Nurgül Ayduran, Jale Arikan, Mina Özlem Sağdiç, Doğa Gürer, Ercan Karaçayli
 
Aslı Özarslan was born in Berlin. She studied theatre and media at the University of Bayreuth, philosophy and sociology at the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), and documentary film directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. In 2009, she directed her first short film; in 2012, she created the 11-minute video installation Kanak Sprak Bist Du, about the German dialect spoken by young people in multiethnic communities, for the Humboldt Box. Her 2014 film Insel 36 and her 2016 graduation film Dil Leyla won numerous national and international awards.

Fatma Aydemir, born in Karlsruhe, lives in Berlin and works as a journalist, publicist, and editor. Her debut novel Ellbogen was published by Hanser in 2017 and won the Klaus Michael Kühne Prize and the Franz Hessel Prize for best authorial debut. In 2019 she co-edited the anthology Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum with Hengameh Yaghoobifarah. Aydemir’s second novel Dschinns was published by Hanser in 2022 and was shortlisted for the German Book Prize. An English translation by Jon Cho-Polizzi was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in September 2024.

Ela Gezen is an associate professor of German at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her work covers 20th-century German and Turkish literature and culture, with a special focus on literature of migration, minority discourses, historical and theoretical accounts of transnationalism, and literary and cultural theory. Gezen is author of Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German Literature: Reception Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960 (Camden House, 2018) and the co-editor of Minorities and Minority Discourse in Germany since 1990 (Berghahn, 2022).