Amrum is typically described as a coming-of-age story, but it is also a children’s adventure narrative in the manner of a Grimms’ folk tale predicated on “the difficult task” (die schweren Aufgaben).

Nothing in Amrum strains disbelief in the way that Petzold’s films often do. But there’s a faintly unreal neatness to the logic of the narrative...

This really is “a Hark Bohm Film by Fatih Akin,” which conversely has us more excited than we have been in a long time to see what Akin gets up to next.

There is no mistake that Fatih Akin forces us to see Amrum’s sanctity coming apart at the seams as chickens coming home to roost.