Ruth Olafsdottir

Le jeune Grimur et sa soeur Gottina habitent avec leurs parents une maison isolée au pied de la montagne. Un drame survient lorsqu'il perd sa famille dans une tragédie qu'il aurait pu, pense-t-il, éviter. A maintenant 40 ans, Grimur veut fuir sa solitude. Il reprend des cours de dessin, qu'il pratiquait dans son enfance, et tombe amoureux de la professeur. Ils deviennent amants. Quand elle tombe enceinte, Grimur prend peur.

When the seven-year-old daughter of an architect falls ill with a rare but curable form of cancer, the family wants to give the child the best possible treatment. Unfortunately, they decide against chemotherapy in favor of a gentle natural remedy. When the hospital doctors notice that the child's condition is deteriorating, the necessary race against time can only begin once the parents are convinced of the effectiveness of conventional therapy.

Ironies abound in this extremely sad melodrama about Elif, a Turkish immigrant in Germany who has been sent to prison for murdering her abusive husband. At the time of her imprisonment, she has never ventured outside the Turkish community, and even there has had no friends because of the demands her husband placed on her. She speaks no German. Now, in a place which most people find to be hell on earth, she gains a never-before known taste of freedom among these strangers, who don't even speak her own language. Unfortunately, as a "guest worker," she is horrified to discover that she is soon to be transferred to the horrific prisons of Turkey and will stand trial there for her crime, which will be much less understandingly dealt with in her home country than it would have been in Germany. The false paradise she must say goodbye to is her German prison.