Berlinale – Burhan Qurbani: “I’m always about the stranger”

Mr. Qurbani, what did you inspire you about the play “Richard III.” So that she is the basis for your new film “no animal. So wildly. «

Richard is not the best known and not the best piece of Shakespeare, it doesn’t come from his golden era. It is not “Hamlet”, it is not “Romeo and Julia”. “Richard III.” I read for the first time at the age of 16, 17, and I always liked this figure, which is part of a family, but is still outside, which has somehow lost due to its physical restriction. So I also felt a bit, in the sense that I am always visible through my appearance in my environment alone, but I am always outside – and that I should never really come in. But Richard just takes it. He is charming, funny, but also brutal and cruel, he is a dramatic figure in any sense. That always fascinated me. A figure like Richard can always be found in my films: At »Berlin Alexanderplatz« it is Albrecht Schuchs character Reinhold, who also runs around with such a hump. And with »We are young. We are strong. ”Is it the figure Robbie played by Joel Basman. He also has a very strange physical dynamic. And he also comes from the outside and drills in again and again and takes the room. I find that so exciting. Even as a child, as a teenager, I was always on the side of the outsiders, I can’t help it. And Richard is the ultimate outsider for me in the Shakespeare universe.

Interview

dpa/ Britta Pedersen

Burhan Qurbani was born in 1980 as a child of Afghan war refugees in Germany. By employment his father at the US Army, he grew up in various German cities. After graduating from high school, he worked as a dramaturgy and director assistant on various theaters. He is a graduate of the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy. His diploma film “Shahada” celebrated its premiere in 2010 in the competition of the Berlinale. His second film »We are young. We are strong. ”In 2014 the film festival opened in Rome and the Hof Film Days. For “Berlin Alexanderplatz” he was again invited to the Berlinale competition in 2020.

In »no animal. So wildly. «As in their previous film” Berlin Alexanderplatz ” – they have had a classic story played in today and especially in Berlin and redefined the main characters. In »Berlin Alexanderplatz« Franz Biberkopf becomes African refugee Francis. And in »no animal. So wild. «The royal families York and Lancaster are two Arab clans. Do you tell a bit about this approach?

Everything started with a picture for me. I came across an image through Instagram: there were four girls who played theater. I was quite sure that they were Arab girls because of their clothes and because of the environment. It was a desert of mountain landscape. I wondered: is that somewhere in Iraq or in Kurdistan? Or is it the Freedom Theater in Dschenin? In any case, that completely put on me. I thought you might be playing Shakespeare, possibly even “Richard III.” So first came the idea of ​​a gender swap: maybe Richard is just a woman. A historical story would have been difficult to realize, so I told it in the here and now. And when the kings and queens were only those with the largest floor, basically gangsters, then, I thought, let us translate it today as a gangster. This is how the PEU à peu.

There is always a Berlin reference in their films. What is Berlin for you?

I only feel at home in Berlin. I realize that I get homesickness in any other German city or in any other city very quickly and want to go back to Berlin. I live in Neukölln. The only time I felt similarly comfortable was in Cairo. By chance I stranded there during the Lockdown. In the three months that I spent there, I felt such a similar pulse, a similar sound, a similar rhythm. I like that in Berlin, and somehow I always translate it in my work. I have the feeling that I would find it difficult to tell a film outside of Berlin. But I also notice that this Berlin, which I showed in my last two films, is not the Berlin that you know. In “The Light”, for example, the opening film of the Berlinale, I knew all of these places, they were very normal and realistic. The Berlin, which I would like to show, is more unusual and surreal.

If you have a migration background or a certain origin, you are often and especially in professional life to deal with your migration background or origin. You can only talk when you deal with your origin. Sometimes you want it yourself because you think that is important – if I can do it better, then I have to do it. But often you are more likely to be reduced to the origin. How is that for you? How did you find your topics in the course of your career?

In my first film “Shahada” it was very much about the Muslim community – the film had premiere at the Berlinale, and that was also great. But the awakening was that for a year I only got offers that told stories about people with a migration background, especially about those who are Muslim faith. So many headscarves and so many mosques. I noticed that I am becoming a job migrant. I now have to fulfill a picture of myself as a director and can only make such films. And I think that is why I made a film about white German neo -Nazis next work. Because I wanted to get out of it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. I am now 44 years old and I don’t even know which community I really belong. I have never really been hugged and recorded by the Afghan community. I didn’t really grew up in her either; So my parents broke up and my mother got us out of the Afghan community relatively early because she was afraid to lose us. But I’m just strange in Germany. In my films, people with migration history now play a role with war experiences because it played a role in my life. But in the end it is always about the stranger. So aliens, people who are not allowed to participate properly who do not really belong in a group, like Richard III, i.e. the Rashida in my film. What I just understand about myself when I look back on four films is that: It’s never about a specific group, it’s always just a specific person in the group. And it is always the stranger. That is what I have to tell as a director. And that can also be young neo -Nazis with me, who are suddenly strange in new Germany. Or an African man who is rinsed on the coast of Europe, or an Arab woman who says in her clan community: I want to go to power now.

Did you always want to become a director?

No. I am a bit socially AWKARD. So for me it is a work act to be social. And I thought I was better an author who only writes, or dramaturge, so I can always hide behind the direction. It turned out more by chance that I applied for the director when I was studying, and then I grew into this role so much. For me, being a good filmmaker means being a good person, involving a team and being there for everyone. And that means that my social batteries are completely empty after each shoot and I will probably be depressed for a month or two and can no longer talk to anyone. But when I’m on the set, I always try to be the best possible director.

What else do you like to do if you don’t make a film?

I like to think about what I want to do as the next film. But I am currently working on a theater production for the Thalia Theater in Hamburg for the first time. For me this is an adventure, for me means to learn my style again. And I thought I can take a break for two years now. But as it develops politically, I do not know whether I can still make films in Germany in two years.

Many are talking about this fear. Fear of a certain future here in Germany. I wanted to ask her what gives you hope anyway. Or do you have any hope?

Do you know what my play is about? It’s about suicide. What I am concerned with is a figure that says: I was always the perfect foreigner, I did everything right. I didn’t complain, I worked well, I paid my taxes, I said nothing when you called “shit foreigners”. And now you throw me out, now you choose me, now 20, 22, 23 percent of the people in this country don’t want me anymore after I was so good. Then because I am a good, good foreigner, I will kill myself today.

You see, I have no hope, it won’t get better, it will get worse. Marx said, story repeats himself – first as a tragedy, then as a farce. We’re at the moment of the farce. And that makes me completely finished. I don’t know where to go. I can’t go back to Afghanistan, and there are no more safe countries in Europe either. But that’s not the point. What is missing is not the safe refuge. I think what is missing is a real vision for a future in which we really listen to each other as civil society, deal with each other, put our anger for a second, look at and work together. And I have this hope that this utopia no longer in my head. Do you have hope?

I’m not the optimistic person right now, but I just can’t go on without hope.

I continue, despite the hopelessness, because I think people just have to keep going. I just see the pictures of hundreds of thousands of people who go north from the south of Gaza and ask me: Where do you take this strength? I think there is so much that these people go home, into their bombed home, and put color on it and build and clean up. Then I am ashamed when I live and say in one of the richest countries in the world, I have no hope. So Burhan, fuck you!