In Essen, four ordinary teenage Death Metal fanatics are looking for the best way to kill time. There are girls, cigarettes, drive-ins and petty larceny but nothing moves the needle.

1999 Film directed by Thomas Arslan

2013 film

A Fine Day is, after the films Geschwister and Dealer, the third part in a trilogy about the living conditions of Turkish youth growing up in Germany. Deniz is 21-years-old, lives in Berlin, works as a dubbing speaker and wants to become an actress. A Fine Day describes a long, labyrinth-like day in the life of Deniz. A day in which she experiences everything that takes place around her with a feverish intensity. The separation from her boyfriend Jan, her relationship to her family, her work, the promise of a new friendship and summer in the city. A Fine Day is the story of a young woman's search for happiness, her feelings and her ideas about love.

Thomas Arslan's second feature film and part of his Berlin-trilogy is a slow-paced milieu study of German-Turkish youth in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The film depicts the every day life, domestic conflicts, dreams and disappointments of three siblings and their aimless, meandering strolls through the Kreuzberg district. The family itself encapsulates the culture clash that is at the centre of many German-Turkish films. In Arslan's film, the mother is German, the father is Turkish and the children have to make up their own minds about their cultural allegiances. Seventeen-year-old Leyla tries to escape from her family by spending most of her time with her best friend Sevim. Her twenty-year-old brother, Erol, has chosen Turkish citizenship and, consequently, has to do military service in Turkey. His mother objects but Erol finds the prospect of continued unemployment and mounting debts, which he cannot repay, in Berlin far more threatening than the prospect of military service in Turkey and leaves. Eighteen-year-old Ahmed is the is about to do his 'Abitur' (final exams at secondary school) and, despite being the most 'assimilated' of the three siblings, finds the experience of living in between two cultures difficult.

Trojan is released from jail and goes straight back to his profession as a criminal. He gets hold of a weapon and looks out for new jobs. In just a few takes, Thomas Arslan sets up the anonymous world of his gangster protagonist by falling back on motifs and characters from the genre. The backroom of a car workshop, parking lots, furnished apartments. One meets men and women who distrust each other because they are all out to line their own pockets. The setting changes constantly, with surveillance and chase scenes providing a dynamic narrative rhythm. Since crime makes up Trojan’s daily existence, the film concentrates entirely on the technical nature of a life outside the law. The reduced and clear-cut images – shot with a Red camera 
– highlight the exact sequence of events. In the Shadows (Im Schatten) is a genre film that focuses consistently on the mechanics and external process of a crime. It develops a sense of great suspense, without burdening its figures with personal stories. Each hand movement has to be right.

建筑工程师迈克尔打算带着十四年都未曾联系的儿子路易斯去挪威参加父亲的葬礼。二人因此有了一段从未有过的独处时光，迈克尔也想借此机会弥补自己作为父亲缺席的十四年。然而，无论迈克尔怎样试图和儿子沟通都无法得到积极的回应，二人之间仿佛有着一堵无法逾越的心墙。尽管这一路上遇到的种种麻烦让路易斯一直埋怨父亲的粗心大意，迈克尔依然希望能够推翻彼此间的隔阂。