2007 / Fatih Akin > For a while, I thought this was going to be Babel-lite. But Akin, having shown his ability to mesmerize and churn the human heart in the fantastic Head-On, tempered his storytelling technique so that it doesn’t reek of emotional manipulation. Sure, it’s got some points where he heavily tests Murphy’s Law, but eventually you can see a mechanism for him to examine how we grieve, how we find solace in a world of tragedies and how there’s always hope. There’s an emotional intelligence to the whole show that sticks. The icing on the cake may be the performance of Turkish beauty Nurgul Yesilcay, who comes off raw yet tender and steals every scene she’s in.