MedienOperative Berlin e.V.
«On the Edge of Dreams»

«Am Rande der Träume,» a feature film with a documentary basis, reveals how increasingly professional alternative film-producing groups became in the course of the 1980s. Awarded the German Youth Video Prize in 1985, it tells the story of Gül, a 16-year-old Turkish girl who grew up in Berlin. She had to fight for many things that German girls accepted as a matter of course – walking down shopping streets on her own, smoking a cigarette in the school café, riding on a motorbike, getting a trainee contract at the hairdresser's. Her brother, Mutlu, who did not come to Germany until he was a young man, scarcely notices restrictions imposed by Turkish customs and culture: his chief concerns are how to acquire a motorbike and become better liked among his German friends. Gül and Mutlu are affected differently by their father's decision to return to Turkey. Evidence mounts that he is preparing a marriage for Gül in Turkey, to a man whom she has never met. This forces her to make a decision about her future.