In partnership with the global film & cultures minor, the Global Neighborhood hosted Duke University Professor Mert Reisoglu for a Turner Theatre screening and discussion of the award-winning 2017 film "In the Fade."
The Global Neighborhood Film Series continued its 2024-25 season with a Jan. 18 screening of “In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts)” by acclaimed Turkish-German director Fatih Akin.
The screening was introduced by Duke University German Studies Professor Mert Reisoglu, whose research centers on Turkish-German Studies, media theory and history and intellectual history. In his opening remarks, Reisoglu noted the film’s historical parallels with the political climate in Germany in the 2010s.
The event was co-moderated by Assistant Professor of English Dan Burns, who assigned the film as part of his Winter Term film studies class, “The Social Thriller.” Eager to explore an international variant of the course’s largely U.S.-themed focus on sociopolitical allegory in suspense and horror narratives, students noted that Reisoglu’s commentary offered an international perspective on the issues explored in American films such as Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ and Nikyatu Jusu’s ‘Nanny.’ Other students appreciated the new exposure to director Fatih Akin’s work, which revolutionized the treatment of migrants in Germany by emphasizing “the pleasures of hybridity” associated with navigating two countries in films like “Head-On” and “The Edge of Heaven.”
Global Neighborhood’s Spring 2025 series continues Feb.18 in Global Commons 103 with filmmaker Frederick Murphy’s “Indelible Appalachia.” Other series titles centering on the neighborhood theme of “Sustainable Futures” this year will include Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist” on March 11, Micha Peled’s “Bitter Seeds” on March 25 and Zheng Xu’s “Upstream” on April 15.