Starring Sibel Kekilli and Nizam Schiller. In German and Turkish with English subtitles. Unrated. Plays Friday to Monday, March 18 to 21, and Wednesday and Thursday, March 23 and 24, at the Vancity Theatre

When We Leave, a first feature for Vienna-born writer-director Feo Aladag, seeks to illuminate the “honour killings” that have plagued some immigrant communities in countries like Germany, where this tale takes place.

It gives away nothing to say that potential violence sparks the plot, since this begins with a young woman threatened by her deeply ambivalent younger brother. Things then jump back to Istanbul, Turkey, where the woman, 25-year-old Umay (Head On’s Sibel Kekilli), is aborting a child. Her husband’s brutal ways prompt her to flee with son Cem (Nizam Schiller) to Berlin, where her own family has long since decamped.

Sadly, her hidebound parents (veteran actors Settar Tanriogen and Derya Alabora) and an older brother (Tamer Yigit) take her defection as an insult to Islam. The aforementioned younger bro (Serhad Can) and a kid sister (Almila Bagriacik) are far more assimilated but are similarly browbeaten by their community’s attempts to hold back the tides of modernity.

If the film is a meditation on codes of masculine violence masquerading as religious tradition—things we should probably leave behind—it also suggests the moral cost to women. This is obvious when it comes to mom’s weak-kneed enabling, but more thorny is Umay’s carelessness regarding what her son is allowed to witness. Most disturbingly pointless is the attempt, after she is banned by the family, to crash her sister’s wedding in a scene that leads not to dramatic epiphany but yet more publicly accepted violence.

In fact, no moments of peace (which, intriguingly, come most often when the characters speak German) go unanswered by dire conflict in this ultimately monotonous effort. Fortunately, the melodrama is mitigated by the richness of its central performance. Kekilli is a gauntly luminous star, and she hints at hidden reserves the movie itself fails to tap.