Happy Birthday, Turke!

This Teutonic film noir received its first U.S. showing at the Seattle Film Festival. Hansa Czypionka plays Kemal Kayankaya, a Turk who speaks no Turkish. Raised in Germany by German parents, he is virtually man without a country, shunned not only by his fellow Turks but by native Germans. So what's an outsider like Kayankaya to do? He becomes a private eye, of course. Hired to find a missing husband, Kayankaya follows the clue trail to a seedy Frankfurt brothel, where the man he seeks is murdered before his eyes. Refusing to drop the case, Kayankaya sinks deeper and deeper into a morass of drug traffic and police corruption. Happy Birthday, Turke! is based on a Chandleresque novel by Jakob Arjouni.