- Associated Press - Saturday, February 12, 2011

BERLIN (AP) - A German filmmaker with Turkish roots is offering a sometimes comical account of an immigrant family’s experience in Germany as an antidote to gloom about insufficient assimilation.

Director Yasemin Sandereli’s “Almanya _ Welcome to Germany” made its debut Saturday at the Berlin film festival, where it is showing out of competition.

It centers on a family drama unleashed by a Turkish grandfather’s decision, 45 years after arriving in Germany as a “guest worker,” to buy a house in his homeland.

Germany is now home to around 3 million people of Turkish origin. Sandereli said that, over the years, “a very, very negative perspective” of them has often been shown.

She said that “we wanted to tell a story as we know it from our own perspective, and that wasn’t so gloomy.”

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