Director

Burhan Qurbani

Germany, France, Canada, Netherlands | 2020 | 183 min | German, English

• Producer Leif Alexis, Jochen Laube, Fabian Maubach
• Production Company Sommerhaus Filmproduktion, ZDF, ARTE, Lemming Film
• Screenplay Martin Behnke, Burhan Qurbani, Alfred Döblin (novel)
• Cinematography Yoshi Heimrath
• Editing Philipp Thomas
• Sound Michel Schöpping, Simone Galavazi, Gaby de Haan
• Cast Welket Bungué, Albrecht Schuch, Jella Haase, Joachim Król, Annabelle Mandeng
• Contacts

  Beta Cinema

  beta@betacinema.com

About the Film

Director Burhan Qurbani has set himself the challenging task of updating Alfred Doblin’s classic novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, which was written in 1929 and set in the Weimar Republic. In this revisitation written by Qurbani and Martin Behnke, the story unfolds in the present day among African immigrants in Berlin, but still draws on the book’s noble and high-minded ideas about the nature of good and evil and what it means to be a man. This marks the first time the gripping story of seedy Berlin life has been brought to the screen in 40 years, since the 1931 film directed by Piel Jutzi and, most famously, Rainer W. Fassbinder’s 15-hour adaptation for German television in 1980 starring Gunter Lamprecht, Barbara Sukowa, and Hanna Schygulla. It will introduce a new generation of film-goers to the poignant story, and offers an original and revealing point of view on the issue of immigration to Europe.

A criminal gang of drug pushers is masterminded by the old-style German gangster Pums (Joachim Król) and managed by the psychopath Reinhold (a notable Albrecht Schuch), whose twisted arm mirrors his twisted mind. Reinhold selects new pushers in crowded community dormitories, where stateless African immigrants provide an endless supply of young men who want to work legally but find all doors closed.

Standing out from the others—both physically and for his proud character and dangerous temper—is tall, statuesque Francis, played by the striking Portuguese-Guinean theater actor Welket Bungué. He has barely survived a boat trip from West Africa, in which his companion Ida tragically perished, and he is tormented by survivor’s guilt and a hunger to make a new life for himself in Germany. Francis, we are told, wants to lead a good life, but as the narrator Mieze (Jella Haase) fatalistically insists, “they won’t let him.” Bungué makes a memorably poignant hero, at once deep and naïve, as Good and Evil in the form of gangsters and sad, victimized women struggle to win possession of his soul.

Deborah Young