German director Fatih Akin explores reactions to loss of loved ones in terror attacks with 'In the Fade'

One of the last films vying for the Golden Palm this year at the Cannes Film Festival is far from being the least. German director Fatih Akin's In the Fade has raised questions about how films here can deal with the subject of terror attacks and their consequences on the families of victims.

Diane Kruger plays Katja in Fatih Akin's In the Fade at the Cannes Fim Festival 2017 Warner Bros. Ent.

 Turkish-origin German director Fatih Akin's In the Fade, whose original title is Aus dem Nicht, is about the effects of an act of terror on the victims' family. It rests on the role of Katja, a German woman seeking justice for the racist murder of her Kurdish German husband - a convicted former drug trafficker - and their six-year old child.

The action shadows Katja's transformation has she reacts to the loss of her family. Actress Diane Kruger reigns supreme in the lead role. She said she was eager to take up the acting challenge because the voices of those left behind after losing loved ones in such horrorific circumstance are rarely heard "it's hard to imagine how people in such cases, carry on living," she said.

In fact, In the Fade provoked probing questions over the radical action that the bereft widow decides to take in the film against the neo-nazi killers of her husband, Nuri and son, Rocco. With this week's terror attack in Manchester in the UK on many people's minds, at a press conference on Friday, Kruger defended the dramatic ending of this film.

"I think my character is not a murderer. She's an everyday kind of woman who was put in a very unfortunate and compromising situation. So the movie is a proposition. Ask yourself, 'what would you do'?"

Akin based his dramatic screenplay for In the Fade, on a real-life event which took place some years ago in Germany.

He was compelled to spell out how he perceives his role in society.

"My films are like water somehow, and I'm like water. On the surface, they reflect what goes on in the world. I'm surrounded by war and I'm full of anger because of that and full of thoughts about that.. If I want or not it, it sneaks into my work and I have to express it, share it. I don't say if what the character is doing is right or wrong, it's up to you."

Fatih Akin won best screenplay at the festival for Edge of Heaven in 2007, will he nab an award this year for this arresting and thought-provoking film?