Umay leaves her abusive husband Kemal in Istanbul with her son Cem to go home to Germany. Her father Kader is concerned about the family's honor. The older brother Mehmet is angry. The youngest brother Acar is scared but kind. Kemal rejects Umay but wants his son Cem back. As Kader and Mehmet try to force the situation, Umay calls the police and she escapes with Cem to a women's shelter. She finds a job with a supportive boss and a new boyfriend. Her younger sister Rana is rejected by her fiancee's father due to the situation. Rana tells her mother that she's desperate to marry Duran because she's secretly pregnant. Kader has to pay off the father to get them married. Umay shows up unexpectedly at the wedding and has a meltdown. Even Acar is forced to confront the lost of family honor.The portrait of the lost of family honor is devastating. The pressure feels real. The need for Umay to reconnect with her family does feel unreasonable and excessive. I doubt a reasonable Umay would show up at the wedding. After the wedding, it seems impossible for her to go to the hospital especially carrying her son with her. Then the final scene has too many twists. It only accentuates the twisty manufactured nature of the writing. Writer/director Feo Aladag needs to tone down some of the more melodramatic developments in the last act.

Die Fremde, or When we Leave is a whole lot of western stereotyping of immigrants living in Europe. In this case, a married Turkish young woman with her son separates from her husband who beats and rapes her frequently. This brings to her life a whole lot of other problems, with her family and specially with her father (and mother), who greatly opposes to what he sees as wrong in a traditional society that treats women as a possession of men. It starts with the scenes of beating an raping that will be the main issues during the film, it follows with her struggle to start her own life under the opposition of her family, her father and the older brother being taking the leading roles in subjugating her.I really wouldn't recommend this film for its mostly eurocentric views of immigrants living in Europe.

I've never watched the same movie three times in a day. Until now. Die Fremde ("When We Leave", probably a better translation would be "The Strangers") is a story about Umay, a young woman living with her husband and son in Istanbul. To protect the child and herself from an oppressive marriage she decides to leave the husband and move back to her family in Germany. Her father, confronted with the choice whether to support and protect his daughter or to be publicly humiliated by the Turkish community, decides to comply with established social norms and wants to send them back to Turkey. Umay refuses to go, but the family is determined to send the child back to the father. From this point the story describes Umay's attempts to protect the child from being taken from her and re-gain acceptance of her family as a single mother. The movie made tremendous impression on me. Watching was a real life changing experience. The most impressive aspect was definitely Umay's character played by Sibel Kekilli. There is something magnificent about her. I believe I learned more from Umay about the love, acceptance and forgiveness than from all the years spent in church. On the negative side I didn't really like the ending, but you can't win them all. I was curious to find out what critics have to say about the movie. Interestingly, most of them missed the main theme. The movie is not about a Muslim women trying to "embrace Western values of personal integrity and freedom", or "clash of the cultures". Umay was born in Germany, her best friend is a Non-Muslim, and apparently she is very well adopted into Western society. This is a story of a mother who is dedicated to the well-being of the child and she does not want to compromise his happiness because of any social expectations, whether they are coming from Western Society or from Islam religion. As such, the story is universal and applicable to theists and atheists, East and West. Probably one of the best movies I've ever seen and certainly the most influential.

I have seen that the previous reviews on the movie also focused on describing the male-dominant concept existing in very Turkish culture. I will choose not to proceed with that part primarily, but only will share my impressions on the movie itself.However, I should still note that these fictitious series of events filmed are not unfortunately far away from the many, that are actual and real life stories. Positive Impressions: Sibel Kekilli appears to have pulled off a very good job with acting. Her role shares many things in common with the one she had in Head On- Gegen die Wand-Duvara Karsi. Her acting was obviously one of the major factors that would significantly influence the overall score, she definitely did a good job.The script itself is generally very realistic, mostly good at simulating a similar incidence that could have happened. It has errors to a certain level from where I look, which I will share later on. Dynamics of this family, with their sensitivity to gossips within their society and the type of expressions they use to deal with things etc. is projected quite accurately. There is a problem with technical depiction of the family, that I will point later on.Negative Impressions:The family itself, as it has been accurately pointed in one of the other reviews, does not support their suggested background. This corrupted social understanding is righteously attributed in one other reviews "to have become a method even independent from Muslim culture itself". Different backgrounds carry different amounts of this understanding. One family would have minded just a little bit, whereas the second would condemn their daughter at any chance, and a third would decide to "eliminate the problem". The third type of family is usually, if actually not always, belong to a very rural background. This third type of family, pictured in the photo didn't reflect such a background with the way they look or the way they talk. Umay's husband, even an accurate choice with his looks, sounded way too urban in the first minutes of the movie. Umay's mother, while with a rural way of talking in the first half, gradually transformed to a typical Istanbul lady with her pronounciation. The older brother was the best among others, whereas he alone couldn't suffice to keep the picture intact with the suggested background of the family. I believe a family image with sharper edges would have kept the picture more appropriate within the borders of realism.I would like to underline once more that the suggested background exists and is projected just to-the-point with choice of expressions family members use -whereas members themselves technically failed to give the impression of a "third-type family". As pointed once more in another review, you can never expect Turkish men to stop looking ahead and start watching their children while they are praying. While doesn't seem like a big issue for the whole movie, it essentially degrades the charm of the movie on viewers who are familiar with the culture. I have also been thinking several things about the plot, without coming to a final conclusion about what could have been better.* It's kind of complicated with why Umay goes to the sister's wedding... She promised her sister about it but she also recently moved away when her brother found out about where she lives. I'm not perfectly sure with the accuracy of realism here. However, it seems quite possible for a young lady who is so suppressed under clash of cultures to act emotional, as her conscious gets (unfortunately) less and less comfortable about the way she treated her family. * Also, the younger brother slapping Umay in the wedding, who has also been motivated to shoot her has been closer to "making sense" side of the shore during first half of the movie. He actually didn't seem to be really vulnerable to possible manipulations in the house, as he was apparently integrated deeper to the culture of the country. However, he was young and he was also under high supression, which can somehow justify his vulnerability. * I am also not very satisfied with the ending sequence. An older brother waiting with a knife in the corner for the younger brother to shoot the sister with a gun, then taking the job over when the younger fails. It's quite suspicious why he didn't pull the child off before going for some stabbing. I would picture an evening scene in some silent corner of the city, where the kid would be taken away by younger brother to somewhere else and Umay would have been killed by the older one. Finally, I am not perfectly sure if a complete outsider to the whole thing would get the concept and dynamics of the social structures in the movie. The movie itself did quite a good job with it, it's only about imagining reaction of a perfect strange to the culture and this content. I naturally cannot be objective, since I already have knowledge about the whole thing. Even I have noted many negative impressions, at the end of the day (with a Turkish way of saying something), this movie is generally very real. The chain of events, apart from the technical depiction of the family, definitely make sense, since there are unfortunately similar real life incidents continuing to happen every year. It is a good feeling to see an above-the-average attempt on screen for giving a chance to every individual, to leave anything else than their sole humanity outside the theatre and watch -and think.