‘In the Fade’ shows a seldom seen face of terrorism

It’s startling how few filmmakers have tried to tackle terrorism with anything beyond a standard procedural account.

It’s less surprising that one of the few to really grapple with a response is Fatih Akin, the German-born filmmaker of Turkish descent, whose thorny, probing dramas traverse borders as a matter of course.

His latest, “In the Fade,’’ is Germany’s Oscar submission and one of the nine films shortlisted for best foreign language film.

It deservedly earned its star, Diane Kruger, the best actress award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. And like the best of Akin’s films (“Head-on,’’ ‘’The Edge of Heaven”), it’s a muscularly lean and emotionally raw film.

At turns a tragedy, a courtroom drama and a revenge thriller, ‘’In the Fade” is a shape-shifting quest through a terrorist tragedy, as outraged as it is compassionate.

Kruger, a native German acting in her first German film, plays Katja Sekerci. She lives in Hamburg with her husband Nuri (Numan Acar), who’s Turkish, and their five-year-old son Rocco (Rafael Santana). In the movie’s opening preamble, Nuri, clad in a white suit, is walked from his prison cell directly into his wedding with Katja. It’s the kind of incongruity Akin delights in. (His “Head-on’’ fashioned a love story between a man and woman brought together by mutual suicide attempts.)

The first notes of “My Girl’’ radiate while Nuri strides down a corridor of cheering male inmates.

It’s also just the first inversion of “In the Fade.’’ The film flashes forward to their happy family life five years later. When Katja returns to Nuri’s office one evening, she encounters a road blocked by police.

Her initial horror is soon confirmed: both Nuri and Rocco have been killed by a nail bomb exploded just outside his tax office, their bodies obliterated. Katja descends into a nightmare of grief and disorientation.

She leads investigators through the rain to her home to give them her husband and son’s toothbrushes to identify their DNA.