In The Fade aka Auf Dem Nichts, written by Hark Bohm and Fatih Akin

In The Fade aka Auf Dem Nichts, written by Hark Bohm and Fatih Akin

In The Fade has won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, although in this cinephile's opinion, Una Mujer Fantastica- which has won the Oscar in the same category- Nelyubov or The Square would have been better choices.

Having said that, Auf Dem Nichts is a very good, significant, remarkable feature, that attracts attention to violence against minorities, in this case the Kurdish community in Germany.

It is therefore not one sided, we do not have only Muslim lunatics killing innocent "infidels", but also some extreme Europeans murdering the other side.

The problem is that, unacceptable, horrifying and vile as these acts are, it appears that the overwhelming majority of atrocities are committed by zealots acting in the name of Islam- radical and unrepresentative as they are for this supposedly peaceful faith, although there are passages in its holy book that seem to insist on a violent jihad and ultimately aggressiveness.

Aside from these facts, there is the issue of those involved in attacks on immigrants, who are fascists, a system of thought at the fringe of Western society, unrepresentative for the belief of more than ninety per cent of the population.

Against this background, the film is compelling and any murderous act is terrifying and loathsome, no matter if one side kills one thousand and the other just two, especially since in this plot an innocent child is dismembered.

Diane Kruger is the excellent actor who plays the protagonist of the narrative, Katja Sekerci, mother to Rocco and married to Nuri, and both husband and son die in an explosion, early on in the story.

Nuri had served a prison sentence for drug dealing, in fact this is how husband and wife had met, when she went to buy some hashish from him.

The explosion was caused by a bomb and in the first instance the police suspect that the criminal activities of the dead man might have been continued after release from prison and because of some dispute over some deal, the bomb could have been a revenge killing.

Katja knows that her spouse has stopped dealing, he has a tax advice and translation office now, where he also sells plane tickets to Turkey, but she asks their lawyer and friend Danilo Fava if Nuri was clean and the answer is that he was.

The investigators are suspicious because the house where the Sekerci family lived is rather lavish for the annual income of about fifty thousand euros and there is a feeling that instead of concentrating on the killers, the dead man is a suspect...evidently, they need to know what the circumstances are.

Katja fights with her mother, who accuses the late husband of making her daughter a drug addict, the parents of Nuri have their own rejected claims- to take the bodies of son and grandchild to Turkey to be buried.

The protagonist suffers from deep depression, she is so disconsolate, tormented, overwhelmed that she decides to kill herself, in the bathroom, she cuts her veins...

Fortunately- for the time being- the phone rings and Danilo is at the other end, with the message that the killers have been caught, they are detained and justice will be done...hearing this message from what could be the other side, the poor woman walks out of the tub of death and decides to see that the assassins are punished.

The widow had given the police details about a young woman she saw at the office, on the day of the bombing, who had a new bike, with a box at the back and which was left without any chain, hence Katja told her to tie the bicycle up.

Edda Moller and her husband Andre have been arrested, they had chemical fertilizer, nails and the other ingredients necessary for a bomb, in the garage near their house, the traces from these chemicals matching what was found at the site of the explosion.

The case in court is complicated nevertheless by some aspects, one of which is the fact that drugs had been found when the investigators searched the apartment of the deceased and they belonged to Katja, who is invited at the trial, by the defense lawyer to pass tests to see if she has taken illegal substances that would have impaired her ability to identify The Edda Moller as the woman with the bike aka the female bomber.

The defense counselor is as obnoxious and repugnant as can be, doing otherwise his job with mastery, insisting also on the fact that the key to the garage with the explosives was kept under a stone and in consequence more people could get into the hiding place and plant the bomb.

The fingerprints of the Neo Nazis have been found on nails at the crime scene, but there are some other fingerprints that have not been identified and the defense uses that, plus the argument that the solicitor for the defense himself has fertilizer and nails at his house, with his fingerprints on them, but that does not make him Unabomber...

Meaning that somebody could have entered the garage of the Mollers, taken the bomb and used it, since Katja uses drugs, she is in no position to claim that her testimony is accurate.

The Neo Nazis have another ace in the sleeve, for they bring a fellow fascist, all the way from Greece and he testifies that at the time of the bombing, the suspects wee in fact staying at his hotel, thousands of miles away from the death scene...

What will the court decide?

Is there another revenge envisaged, planned by Katja?

The motion picture gets ever more gripping and enticing towards the end, which is unexpected.