In the Fade (18)
Directed by Fatih Akin

INCREASING attacks on immigrants and the rise of fascism and neonazi white supremacists are the focus of this nail-biting drama, which also explores how far a woman would go to seek retribution for the deaths of her loved ones in a vicious terrorist attack.

Acclaimed writer-director Fatih Akin's film is told uniquely and solely from the point of view of Katja (Diane Kruger), whose world is decimated when her Turkish husband Nuri (Numan Acar) and six-year-old son Rocco (Rafael Santana) are killed by a nail bomb which goes off outside Nuri's office.

Initially, the police investigate whether Katja's husband, a former drug dealer, is to blame until it is discovered that a neonazi couple were the perpetrators.

The film's based on the real-life attacks by the racist NSU (National Socialist Underground) between 2000 and 2007 in Germany, during which the far-right extremist group shot dead nine people from immigrant backgrounds and a German policewoman, as well as carrying out multiple bombings. The murders were initially blamed on the victims and the Turkish Mafia.

Astutely, Akin eschews showing the explosion or the immediate aftermath as the story unfolds through the eyes of Katja, who arrived at the scene well after the fact. But the clinical, matter-of-fact description by a medical expert of her son's fatal injuries at the trial of the NSU terrorists is harrowing and just as devastating, as is the crippling pain, horror and grief etched on Katja's face as she learns what no mother ever wants to hear.

Kruger's powerhouse performance is career-defining and it's the driving force of this film as it metamorphoses from courtroom drama to gritty revenge thriller. Those courtroom scenes are electric as the law is proved to be an ass and Katja finds herself and her dead spouse, an ex-drug pusher turned law-abiding tax adviser and translator, being put on trial.

This is a film that screams at the injustice of the legal system, police racial bias and the rise in xenophobia and racist attacks and culminates in a powerful and shocking ending.

It resonates very strongly in the current climate of vilification of immigrants in Britain and the US.