Im Juli
The film begins on a hot summer day on a country road. A man stops by the side of the road and watches a solar eclipse. When it is over, he opens his trunk and sprays bug spray on the dead body he has inside. A hitchhiker then comes up behind him to ask for a ride but is instead hit by the man's car. The driver decides to come back and pick up the hitchhiker's body from the road. The drivers name is Isa (Mehmet Kurtulus) and he is heading to Turkey. He finds out the hitchhiker's name is Daniel (Moritz Bleibtrau), who is a student teacher on his way to Turkey also to find a girl and the flashback of his love story begins.Daniel first meets Juli (Christiane Paul) when she calls him over to her stand on the street in Hamburg where she sells jewelry. She sells him an ancient Mayan ring with a sun on it and tells him that it will lead him to the woman who will bring him true happiness. She also invites him to a party that night.Daniel goes to the party and sees a girl with a picture of a sun on her shirt. She asks him if he knows of a cheap place to stay for the night. He finds out her name is Melek (Idil Üner), a Turkish name. As they leave the party, Juli sees them and one sees that she has a picture of a sun on her dress.Melek stays at Daniel's apartment and takes her to the airport the next day. He cries as she leaves for Istanbul, thinking that they were meant to be together.Juli decides to hitchhike and go wherever the first car to pick her up is going. Daniel is the first person to stop and she hops in the car with him. He tells her he's heading to Istanbul because the ring she sold him worked and he's found the girl of his dreams. She tells him that she's also going to Istanbul.The car they are driving breaks down in Bavaria and they have to share a bed that night in a tiny motel. The next morning, they argue about which route they should take to get to Turkey. A truck driver named Leo going to Budapest picks them up. They stop at a bar and Daniel waits outside while the other two go in and have a beer. Juli tells Leo that she wishes Daniel would fight for her. Leo asks Juli to dance with him and begins grabbing her inappropriately. Juli yells for Daniel who comes in and saves Juli.Juli and Daniel take a boat on the Danube and smoke weed, which makes them float in the air. Juli asks Daniel what he is going to say when he finds the girl he's after. He doesn't know and she gives him a declaration of love to say to her.They wake up on the boat the next morning and the crew throws Daniel overboard, separating he and Juli. Daniel finds land and a girl driving a beat-up van picks him up. She takes him to a bar to get some food and drugs his soda. Daniel soon finds himself in the girl's van again and still under drugs. The girl starts to sensually manipulate Daniel's bodily movements and steals his sun ring.Daniel wakes up surrounded by barrels of hay and is shot at by a farmer. He finds out he is in Budapest and goes to a street market where he sees the girl selling his sun ring. He grabs it from the stand and runs with a merchant on his tail, giving the girl a chance to steal from another merchant. She also runs and Daniel eventually hops onto the roof of the temptress's van, commencing a chase. The chase ends after Daniel and the girl driving the van evade the pursuing merchant and are stopped by the police. Daniel escapes with the van without the police seeing him as the girl is arrested.Daniel comes to the border of Romania, but soon realizes that the temptress stole his passport and the guard won't let him cross. Just then, Juli comes out of a bathroom right across the border. They tell the border guard they are married so that he can join her in Romania. She wants Daniel to repeat the love speech she told him earlier, but he can't remember it. He promises Juli that he will learn it. The border guard makes them give him the van Daniel was driving as a gift.Daniel and Juli steal a car from a repair shop and travel through Romania, taking photos of everything they see and do. Daniel knows he cannot get to Bulgaria without a passport and tries to jump his car over a small river to get around crossing the official border. The car sinks and they are again without transportation. Daniel tells Juli that it's all her fault that he has gotten into all these messes and hasn't gotten to Istanbul yet. That night, while Daniels asleep, Juli hitchhikes again. Daniel wakes up and sees the solar eclipse, bringing the story back to the point when he is picked up by Isa.Isa and Daniel pull up to the border of Turkey at this point, but a guard finds the corpse in the trunk and the two are arrested. Isa explains to Daniel that the corpse is his uncle from Turkey who died while visiting his family in Germany. Daniel silently escapes from jail and Isa is able to explain why he had a body in the trunk and is let off as soon as he gets his uncle's birth certificate.Daniel waits in a café for a bus to Istanbul, when he runs into Melek. Melek says she has to take something to the border and Daniel realizes that Melek is actually Isa's girlfriend and that she's bringing him his uncle's birth certificate.Daniel arrives in Istanbul and finds Juli waiting for him. He recites the speech she told him to say and they kiss. They hitchhike together and are picked up by Isa and Melek. As Juli gets into the car, Daniel sees the sun tattoo on her back for the first time.
romantic, psychedelic, entertaining