In the Fade

Katja's Turkish husband and their son are killed by a bomb in Hamburg. She knows neo-Nazis did it, and the court starts moving in another direction. The film splits into three parts: family, justice and sea. Fatih Akin wrote it in the aftermath of the NSU murders, and the attack draws on the 2004 Cologne bombing, when neo-Nazis detonated a nail bomb above a bicycle rack and injured nearly two dozen people. Diane Kruger won Best Actress at Cannes in 2017. It was only her second significant German-language role after Inglourious Basterds. Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age wrote the score, and the English title comes from his band's song of that name. Germany submitted it for the Academy Awards without a nomination, though it won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 77 percent, with a consensus saying plainly that the film does not quite live up to Kruger's remarkable work. Who it is for: viewers drawn to the distance between grief and justice. Who it is not for: anyone who needs the ending to be morally clean. The final act is the most argued-about part of the film, and the criticism is earned.