In July

Utterly, joyfully absurd. In July is an invigorating experience.

I haven’t had this much fun with a movie in decades. True, I haven’t lived through many decades, but that’s just how this movie made me feel. I walked out of the theater dazzled, I felt alive!

In July is a film by Turkish-German director Fatih Akin. It follows the story of Daniel (Moritz Bleibtreu) – a young, naive teacher-in-training – as he travels across from Germany to Turky on a quest to find the woman of his dreams. The story begins in the middle as Daniel relates his experience to the shifty character of Isa (who carries a dead body in his trunk for some reason). It plays out as a series of miscommunications, chance encounters, and loose story threads, which coalesce into a serendipitous web of coincidental connections that transcend borders and logic.