General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Im Juli

Im Juli (In July; Turkish title Temmuz'da) is a 2000 German romantic road movie written and directed by Fatih Akin, in which a shy Hamburg physics teacher drives across Europe to Istanbul chasing a woman he believes is his destiny, while the girl secretly in love with him rides along.¹^•² It was Akin's second feature film, made immediately after his debut crime drama Kurz und schmerzlos (1998), and marked a deliberate turn from gritty social realism to light comedy.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title / international title	Im Juli / In July (Turkish: Temmuz'da)¹^•⁴
Director and writer	Fatih Akin¹
Release	German theatrical release 24 August 2000; 100 minutes; 35mm, 1:1.85; FSK 12⁵
Principal cast	Moritz Bleibtreu (Daniel), Christiane Paul (Juli), Mehmet Kurtulus (Isa), Idil Üner (Melek)¹
Key crew	Cinematography Pierre Aïm; music Ulrich Kodjo Wendt; editing Andrew Bird²
Reception	Metascore 71 (10 positive, 2 mixed reviews); IMDb 7.6/10 from about 24,000 votes⁶^•¹
Award	German Film Award 2001, Lola in Gold for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Moritz Bleibtreu)⁵

Spoilers

Plot

Daniel Bannier (Moritz Bleibtreu) is an insecure trainee teacher with no plans for the summer holidays. At a Hamburg flea market, the free-spirited jewelry seller Juli (Christiane Paul), who has long carried a secret crush on him, sells him an old Mayan ring bearing a sun symbol, telling him it will lead him to the woman of his life; she means herself.⁷^•⁸ That same evening Daniel meets Melek (Idil Üner), a young Turkish woman passing through Hamburg, and believes the ring's prophecy has come true.⁷^•⁹

When Melek returns to Istanbul, Daniel impulsively sets off after her by car. He picks up the hitchhiking Juli, and the two travel together through Central and Southeastern Europe toward Turkey, through hardships and bizarre episodes, while Daniel dreams of Melek and Juli hopes his affections will turn to her.³ Along the way Daniel is beaten up, seduced, robbed, gets high on drugs for the first time in his life, and is jailed by Turkish border guards; the journey becomes one of self-revelation, and he realizes at the end that love was traveling beside him all along.¹⁰

Production

Shooting ran from 20 July to 30 September 1999 in Hamburg, Munich, Hungary, and Turkey.⁵ The film was produced by Ralph Schwingel and Stefan Schubert for Wüste Filmproduktion, with Senator Film Verleih as German distributor and Bavaria Film International handling world sales.³^•¹⁰ Funding came from FilmFörderung Hamburg, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, the Filmförderungsanstalt, and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media.⁵

The French cinematographer Pierre Aïm, known for La Haine, gave the film a bright, postcard-like look with light-toned color filters and sequences of still photographs that recall old analog snapshots.⁷ During Daniel and Juli's journey across Romania, the film shifts from live action to a sequence of still photographs, a decision made largely for budgetary reasons.¹¹ Akin and his brother Cem appear in cameo roles as border guards, in two scenes of comic communication breakdowns with Daniel.⁷

Reception

The film premiered in the main program of the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2001.³ Critics received it favorably: on Metacritic it holds a Metascore of 71 from 12 reviews, 10 positive and 2 mixed, with no negative reviews.⁶ The New York Daily News praised its "off-the-cuff sense of adventure, a winningly scruffy charm and a whip-smart sense of humor," and the Washington Post called it "so unambiguously good-natured it feels like something fresh."⁶ On IMDb it rates 7.6/10 from about 24,000 users.¹

The German board of film rating (FBW) awarded the film the Prädikat wertvoll (valuable) rating, describing it as a romantic road movie that aims to entertain rather than problematize, and crediting the versatile performances of Bleibtreu and Paul.¹² At the 2001 German Film Awards, Bleibtreu won the Lola in Gold for Best Actor in a Leading Role.⁵

Place in Akin's work and Turkish-German cinema

After the critical attention of Kurz und schmerzlos, a hard-edged thriller set in Hamburg's petty-gangster milieu, Im Juli was a striking genre change. Akin told his crew before shooting that the comedy belonged to him just as the drama did, and the German as much as the Turkish.⁷ The Rotterdam festival catalog read the film as evidence that Akin, a German-born son of Turkish parents, refused to be compartmentalized, and noted that it put him on the track toward commercial success.³ A later survey of his career calls the film his commercial breakthrough.¹³

Scholars of Turkish-German cinema have placed the film in a body of work, alongside Head-On and The Edge of Heaven, in which protagonists journey in the reverse direction of classic migration narratives, from Germany to Turkey, so that transnational travel becomes a quest for redemption or new forms of identity.¹⁴ The film also plays with cultural symbols: the Mayan sun ring is detached from its original meaning and reinterpreted by Juli as a sign of luck and love, and the story addresses exoticizing stereotypes of Turks in Germany while remaining, in the FBW's phrase, a film fairy tale.¹⁵^•⁹^•¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2000 to 2002 › Comedies of 2000

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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