LAMORINDA WEEKLY | 'In the Fade' (Aus dem nichts) - A dark drama at Orinda Theatre


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German screenwriter, producer and director Fatih Akin created "In the Fade," a drama that tackles an all too contemporary tragedy: terrorism. Akin once said that the violence happening all over the world made him very angry; from that anger was born a movie of violence, destruction, injustice and revenge.

Katja is a beautiful young German woman whose life is shattered when her Kurdish husband and her son are killed in a terrorist attack. When the normal system fails her, she takes it into her own hands to get justice.

Former top model and international actress Diane Kruger ("Inglorious Bastards") leads the film with a powerful interpretation that granted her a well-deserved Best Actress award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.

The genesis of the movie began in 2011, according to Akin, when the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Underground was prosecuted for killing 10 people, mostly Turks, over a seven-year period. He said what infuriated him most was that for all these years, the police, the media and the justice system all assumed that if these people were killed, it was because they must have been drug dealers and that they had been killed by the Turkish mafia.

The director added that while the idea of the movie started with a political theme, as the character of the mother developed, the political content of the movie began to fade, and it became more of a film about grief.

Kruger explained this was why she was interested in the film, and in playing this role, which is so far from herself. She explained that the story needed to be told of what happens to those who survive and have lost loved ones, and how they can continue to live with the horror of what happened and with injustice.

The violence of the terrorist acts infuses this entire film. As Kruger put it in one interview, we are in a world where that reality is here to stay, and films must account for this distressing part of our reality. While the film's radical ending may not have been necessary to express the real and terrible drama victims' families go through, Akin said that he does not judge the path that Katja, the main character, takes, and that each viewer will make his or her own judgment.

"In the Fade" received the 2018 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It will play at the Orinda Theatre as part of the International Film Showcase for at least one week starting March 23. For more information, visit lamorindatheatres.com.