The 75th Berlinale will open on Thursday with the premiere of “Das Licht” (The Light), from German director Tom Tykwer, familiar to international audiences for his work on the streaming series “Babylon Berlin” and the hit 1998 film “Run Lola Run”. The festival opener is about a dysfunctional German family whose lives are upended by a Syrian immigrant hired as a housekeeper. Tykwer has described his new film as being “an older sister” to Lola, which was a huge art house hit as it presented three different ways in which the young Lola angled to get a large ransom to spare her boyfriend from mob vengeance.

Given that immigration is one of the biggest topics in the upcoming German national elections, in which the anti-immigrant AfD party is one of the leaders in the pre-vote polls, the film’s impact will be interesting to see. Watch this space.

— By Michael Roddy