Soul Kitchen

Zinos runs a scruffy restaurant in Hamburg and his life falls apart all at once: his girlfriend leaves for Shanghai, he wrecks his back, and his brother on prison day-release lands on him. Then a chef he had fired takes over the menu and turns it into haute cuisine, driving out the regulars and pulling in a completely different crowd. Fatih Akin directed and wrote it with Adam Bousdoukos, drawing on Bousdoukos's own years running a Greek taverna in Hamburg. It is less light than it sounds: underneath is gentrification and a neighbourhood changing hands. Akin called it a modern Heimatfilm, a homeland film. It won the Grand Jury Prize, the Silver Lion, at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. In Germany it became Akin's best commercial result: 160,000 admissions on its opening weekend and past 500,000 within ten days. Who it is for: viewers who like food, music and neighbourhood films, and anyone wanting air after Akin's heavier dramas. Who it is not for: those expecting the severity of Head-On. This is a comedy on purpose, and the plot occasionally slides into sitcom logic.