Tag: Fatih Akin

Our dirty questions to Fatih Akin

Posted on by victorfraga
Picture above: Getty Images for the Red Sea International Film Festival

Born in Frankfurt in the year of 1973 to Sunni Muslim parents, Fatih Akin is now firmly established as one of the most prominent voices of German cinema, with 18 feature films under his belt. They include the 2004 Golden Bear winner Head-on, the political thriller In the Fade (2017), the dirty serial killer biopic The Golden Glove (2019), and much more. His movies often deal with the topic of Muslim identity in Europe. He is a special guest at the 2nd Red Sea International Film Festival, where he is showcasing his latest creation Rhinegold, the real-life story of Kurdish-German hip-hop rapper, entrepreneur, and ex-convict Giwar Hajab, better known by his artistic name Xatar (review to follow soon!).

Victor Fraga briefly spoke to the talented filmmaker in Jeddah, during day 5 of the 2nd Red Sea International Film Festival:

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Victor Fraga – You are in Saudi Arabia! How did this invitation come to being?

Fatih Akin – I am a good friend of Kaleem [Aftab], who is one of the festival programmers. I knew about the Red Sea [International Film Festival] from the very beginning. This gigantic new festival bang in the middle of the Middle East. I was very curious about it. This is a part of the world I had never been to, and I’m a very curious person.

Saudi Arabia was a very important place for my father because he was a very spiritual person. And my father’s trip to Saudi Arabia changes our lives. He became a far more peaceful person upon his return. He passed away last year while I was shooting,

VF – Is it emotional for someone who grew in a Turkish Sunni Muslim environment to be in Saudi Arabia?

FA – Saudi Arabia was a very important place for my father because he was a very spiritual person. His trip to Saudi Arabia changes our lives. He became a far more peaceful person upon his return. He passed away last year while I was shooting. Knowing how much this place meant to him makes this trip very special to me. It’s not just a trip for the filmmaker. It’s a deeply personal and spiritual experience.

VF – Are you planning to visit Mecca, and do your Hajj!

FA – Actually, I went to Mecca already! But it wasn’t the Hajj. I did the Umrah instead. This is one of the centres of the world. You get Milan for the fashion world. Then there’s New York, LA, Beijing, maybe Mumbai. When you are there, at the centre of the world, in the circle, in the Kaaba, you feel the spiritual strength from all those people. It’s a really charged place.

VF – Rhinegold has been described as your most ambitious project to date. Is that indeed an accurate description?

FA – It was ambitious because it was a Plan B and it had to be done very quickly. I was working on something else, which collapsed because of Covid-19. I have this tiny boutique company, and we have to shoot in order to survive. I had bought the rights to the biography on which Rhinegold is based a couple of years earlier. It’s something which maybe i would do myself, maybe I would produce and get someone else to direct it. And then suddenly I didn’t have a project, so I decided to do it so my company could survive. But while I was working on it I decided I had to tell the story of his parents as well. So I had to go back to Tehran and to the Islamic revolution, and I have to make a migrant story out of it, set in the 1980s, and it the 1990s, so gradually it became bigger and bigger, and more ambitious. And also more expensive. I had to write to script from beginning to end in just eight months. But I didn’t finish yet. I started looking for financing with an unfinished script, and I started shooting with an unfinished financing. Then there was Covid-19, then there was my father’s death while I was shooting. It was so complicated! But I managed it, thanks God the film is very successful!

VF – How does the integration of immigrants in Germany compare to their experience in the UK?

FA – We have a very different story of immigration. Britain was a colonial empire. India, Pakistan were all part of the empire. The history of immigration in Germany is pretty young, it started in the 1960s with the Gastarbeiter who went there in order to work.

VF – Turks and Greeks?

FA – Turks, Greeks and Yugoslavs. Mostly people from countries who were either Germany’s allies during World War II, or at least neutral. Until the 1990s you could only be German if you had German blood. This is not the case of immigration in the US and the UK. This doesn’t mean there is no racism in these countries.

VF – But Germany has now changed?

FA – Yes, that was 30 years ago that you could only be German by blood. That’s so old-fashioned. I’m not blaming them though. People can’t suddenly change by pressing a button. Real change takes time!

VF – We are bang in the middle of the World Cup, so let’s talk about football. The sport was invented in England and the British Empire disseminated it throughout the globe. Is football nowadays a colonialist tool, or has it become a weapon of resistance?

FA – Let me tell you: I’m not so deep into football! I played it long enough. I now have two surgeries on my knee. I reached the level where it destroyed by body. That’s why I’m no longer so much into it.

Two things. the first thing I say is football and sports in general should not be policitised. The second thing I say is EVERYTHING IS POLITICS!!! [laughs out loud]

The Golden Glove (Der Goldene Handschuh)

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN

The filmmaker Fatih Akin was born in Hamburg in 1973 to Turkish parents. He is best remembered for politically-charged dramas and thrillers, such as 2017’s In The Fade and 2004’s Head On (the last German film to win the Golden Bear). He has now directed a gruesome serial killer story with little emotional depth and virtually no political connotation. The Golden Glove recreates the story to Fritz Honka, who killed at least four prostitutes in the Red Light District of the city where the director was born, between 1970 and 1975.

The film title refers to a local watering hole populated mostly by older prostitutes and drunkards. Fritz (or “Fiete”, as he was affectionately called by punters) is a regular, too. A man nicknamed “Anus” serves the peculiar clientele. These people look like they came straight outta hell without a wash. Or from a painting by John Currin. Their faces contorted with alcohol and drugs use, their mouths foul with obscenity and depravity. A place where you would never take your mum. Or your daughter. Or anyone else.

Honka himself is the picture of ugliness. Crossed-eyed, teeth crooked and with a hunchback. He has a lisp, and his speech is hardly intelligible at times. He seems to have learning difficulties. A female punter puts it succinctly: “I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire”. He’s not your average serial killer. Unlike Lars Von Trier’s Jack, he has no acute intelligence and perceived sense of superiority. Unlike the Argentinean angel Carlitos, he has no wit and sex appeal. He is driven by his immediate urges, and he doesn’t seem to plan his actions very carefully. He is not seeking a place in history, in the dubious pantheon of evil killers. He doesn’t seem to aspire anything at all. He’s the epitome of mediocrity.

The Golden Glove is a dirty comedy. This is more or less what you would get if Divine from Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972) met Fritz Harmaan from The Tenderness of the Wolves (Ulli Lommel, 1973). The attic flat where Honka dwells and lures his victims is so dirty that it’s hardly habitable. Honka hides the body parts in the chimney. The place smells of decaying flesh, and Honka justifies the stink by blaming the downstairs neighbours from Greece, “guest workers who don’t work” and who “constantly make soup”. The sex scenes are anti-erotic, violent revulsive. Yet, there is something credible about the film. The real pictures of Honka’s flat shown during the final credits suggest that Akin wasn’t too far off from recreating the original environment. Some people are very dirty indeed.

There is, however, one calming and soothing aspect about The Golden Glove: the soundtrack consists entirely of old Schlager classics (cheesy German chanson). I’ll be buying it as soon as it comes out. A prostitute is brought to tears by one of the tunes. Lale Andersen’s Ein Schiff Wird Kommen (“A Ship Will come”) provides some redemption to these lost and destitute soul. The music is puerile. In a way, Honka too is puerile. Fritz Honka is a dirty and twisted Willy Wonka.

Ultimately, The Golden Glove is plain wrong and wittingly so. It’s gruesome and hilarious in equal measures. A fitting tribute to bad taste.

The Golden Glove is showing in competition at the 69th Berlinale. Most people I spoke to did not share my feelings about the film (not everyone likes it dirty), and it’s probably just too controversial for the much-coveted Golden Bear.

In The Fade (Aus dem Nichts)

Posted on by victorfraga

Racism and xenophobia don’t always come in the shape of verbal abuse, chants or even a pig’s head left in front of a mosque. Sometimes they operate in ways so obtuse and inhumane, that at first one struggles to believe that such actions could be justified solely by the colour of the skin and the origin of the victim. In In The Fade, neo-Nazis blow up a small office in Hamburg belonging to a Turkish man called Nuri Sekerci (Numan Acar), claiming the lives of the owner and his only child, a boy called Rocco (Rafael Santana). The non-German origin of the victims was the sole motivation of the crime.

At first, the police fail to believe that this could be related to indigenous German terrorists (aka neo-Nazis), instead insisting that Nuri, who previously served time on marijuana charges, was a drug dealer and had a number of enemies. We learn the perverse rationale of the investigations: a foreigner is always on the wrong side of the law, particularly if he’s a former convict. His German wife and mother of his child Katja (an electrifying and superb Diane Kruger) and her lawyer Danilo Fava (Denis Moschttto) about the only ones who beg to differ, but Katja ‘s reliability is questioned due to her own petty drug use. She attempts to take her own life in one of the most graphic and disturbing suicide scenes I’ve seen since Alan Clarke’s Scum (1983).

Two neo-Nazi suspects are finally identified, and Katja’s reclaims her will to live in an attempt to make justice for her late husband and son. The court proceedings are particularly jarring. The two deaths are described in detail, as is the homemade bomb consisting of oil, fertiliser, 500 nails and a detonator. Katja chooses to face the people who likely murdered her family. Her sanity and her late husband’s moral integrity are often under question. At times, it feels like it’s Katja and Nuri who are under trial.

A very pertinent political twist is added roughly halfway through the movie. The neo-Nazis have links to the Greek far-right party Golden Dawn, which has several seats in Parliament. This is a sordid reminder that the neo-Nazi movement isn’t confined to Germany, but rather a pan-European and also a global trend. The film, which premiered at Cannes last year, was finished before Donald Trump was elected and began his ultra-racist and white supremacist tirade, in a vile attempt to perpetuate and redeem xenophobia. The neo-Nazis of In the Fade would undoubtedly feel at home in Charlottesville, and would be described by the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief as “very nice people”.

Be prepared for a shocking film ending with a highly symbolic connotation.

In The Fade is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, June 22nd. On Mubi on Friday, May 21st (2022).