In the Fade

In the Fade is a 2017 German drama film written and directed by Fatih Akin. It stars Diane Kruger as a German woman whose Turkish-Kurdish husband and son are killed in a terrorist attack perpetrated by neo-Nazis. It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where Kruger won the Best Actress award. It was selected as the German entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, making the December shortlist, but it was ultimately not nominated. It did, however, win the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Plot Several years after he spent four years in prison for drug dealing, during which time he has studied business administration and gotten married, Kurdish-German Nuri Şekerci lives happily with his German wife, Katja, and their six-year-old son, Rocco. One day, Katja drops Rocco off at Nuri's office, a small travel agency in Hamburg, so she can spend the afternoon with a friend. Heading out, she warns a young blonde woman leaving her new bicycle in front of the store that it will get stolen if she doesn't lock it up. When Katja returns that night she finds the street blocked off after a nail bomb detonated, killing Nuri and Rocco. Distraught, Katja tells the police about the woman with the bike and comes to believe the attack to be the work of Neo-Nazis. The police rule out a Jihadist motive as Nuri was neither religious nor political and initially focus on revenge by drug traffickers, though they release a composite sketch of the blonde woman. After Katja declines Nuri's parents' request to bury the bodies in Turkey, Nuri's mother coldly informs her at the funeral that her grandson would still be alive if Katja had been a better mother. Devastated, Katja uses drugs and later attempts suicide by slashing her wrists, but changes her mind after hearing a voicemail from her lawyer Danilo Fava stating that two Neo-Nazi suspects, married couple André and Edda Möller, have been caught. At the Möller trial, André's father, disgusted with his son's actions, testifies how he found bags of nails, fertilizer, and diesel in the garage. The defense argues that another party could have gained access to the garage through a hidden key. Forensics match the bomb to the material found in the garage, which bears fingerprints from the couple and an unknown individual, who could have been a store employee but who the defense claims as an unknown culprit.