“Love, Deutschmarks and Death” represents the odyssey of an uprooted people that is still searching for a place to call home. The history of Turkish immigrants in Germany, stretching between the beginning of the 1960s and the present day here takes the form of a graceful lament where the need to adjust oneself and to belong, homesickness, as well as social changes blend together to the jarring tunes of the likes of Cem Karaca, protest icon of the FRG, or Muhabbet, the famour rapper of the 2000s generation. In his film, director Cem Kaya follows a phenomenon that is as widespread as it is barely studied: without sugarcoating the drama of the so-called gastarbeiter, he observes how the uprooting process produced a new musical subgenre capable of politically reflecting the daily hardships of life among xenophobic strangers, as well as to comfort these workers in their unescapable drama. From a trivial auxiliary wing of exile, Turkish immigrant music becomes a veritable marker of the community, which enables the filigree filtering of collective trauma and the need for resilience – all in a rhythmical audiovisual form, which pulsates among improvised bazaars and megalomaniac construction sites.  (Victor Morozov)