Aynur (Almila Bagriacik) with her instructor in A Regular Woman (Tribeca Film Festival)

Is there room for another film about honor killings? Director Sherry Hormann answers with a yes in her brisk, beat-by-beat depiction of the 2005 murder in Berlin of Hatun “Aynur” Surucu, 23, by her youngest brother, a baby-faced aspiring lightweight boxer.

This summary, by the way, is no spoiler. In the tradition of Sunset Boulevard, A Regular Woman is narrated from beyond the grave via actress Almila Bagriacik as Aynur, who gives a vivacious and more-than-persuasive performance. The filmmakers acknowledge that the killing is why this film is being made in the first place, but at the same time, the screenplay makes Aynur into a compelling protagonist. She’s not entirely a secular German or a conventional, observant Muslim (though she eventually leans toward the former). In her freeform, confessional voice-over, Aynur addresses a non-Muslim Western audience and second-guesses their most pressing question: Why would this young woman keep in touch—and hope to reconcile—with her physically and emotionally abusive family?

The film is low on sensationalism. An arranged marriage to a cousin takes place when she is 16, and viewers never see the physical abuse inflicted by her husband, which causes her to flee from Turkey and return to the Kurdish family fold in Kreuzberg. She arrives pregnant, and her parents reluctantly accept her as long as she works at home and never leaves the apartment unaccompanied.

Among the film’s strongest sections are the claustrophobia-inducing squabbles within the family home, in which the sisters sleep in one room and the brothers in another. So that Aynur and her baby boy won’t disturb the others, they sleep in a walk-in closet, but one night, one of her older brothers attempts to rape her, and no one among the grown-ups believes her accusation. In order to move out free from constraint, she needs her father’s permission, which he refuses to give. Aynur’s one ally in the family, the rebellious brother Aram (Armin Wahedi Yeganeh), has fled the family nest and lives in another city. He advises her to do the same, and she and her infant son leave the family for their own Berlin apartment, with the assistance of a women’s shelter. Aynur’s hope for a rapprochement, against all odds and despite the continuous harassment from her brothers, fuels the tension for the rest of the film.

The scenario is similar to a movie that screened at Tribeca nearly 10 years ago, Feo Aladag’s When We Leave (2010), which was inspired by this same crime. Noticeably, the newer film departs from the somberness of the previous version through Aynur’s conversational and sometimes glib voice, which also offers a respite, even though the audience knows the ending. While Aynur’s mother and a beloved sister stood by the killer during the resulting trial, others outside of the family supported Aynur after her death. Two witnesses who testified on her behalf are still in Germany’s witness protection system.

A late-in-the-game subplot involving a Turkish-German teenager adds a dimension to this otherwise straightforward narrative, when Evin (Lara Aylin Winkler), a friend of one of Aynur’s sisters, becomes fascinated by this large, religiously observant family. Her story line contrasts and intertwines unknowingly with Aynur’s as the Surucu family welcomes her as the ideal fiancé for Aynur’s younger brother, Nuri (Rauand Taleb)—the eventual murderer.

Aynur reinvents her life with her son as an independent woman, attends vocational school to become an electrical engineer, and falls in love with a German man. The film is unapologetically on her side (when she removes her head scarf as a symbol of her determination, her hair falls down to an electro beat). However, at its most one-dimensional, the patriarchy becomes a perfunctory and crude boo-hiss villain. Yet just when viewers might think that the tension between Aynur and her family is too incredible to believe, the filmmakers insert photos and video of the real-life Aynur, never letting you forget that she was an actual person.