“No animal. So wild. « – Kenda Hmeidan: Queen in the mud

It was your first work for the cinema. And then a leading role. Kenda Hmeidan has the Rashida in Burhan Qurbanis fourth feature film »No animal. So wild. «Played that is just starting in the cinemas. A free appropriation of William Shakespeare’s historical drama “Richard III.” For the canvas.

However, nothing can be felt of the shy of the debutante in front of the camera. Hmeidan plays her role strikingly powerful and wears the film for the whole duration of almost two and a half hours. The man, who is called Richard at Shakespeare and calls himself Duke of Gloucester, is a Rashida in Qurbanis adaptation.

Asked about this Rashida, Hmeidan describes her in conversation as “a strong figure, over complex and complex”. “It acts very strategically and at the same time pragmatic,” she says. It should be noted to the film that the actress does not deliver the flagship weight from the standard repertoire for the audience. She has seriously developed the figure.

»Rashida’s conflict goes back to her childhood when she came from a war zone and ended up in a completely different country. She had to start from scratch, lost her language, «she says. And also: “There is a lot of trauma that causes her anger and hunger for visibility.”

Together with the playwright Enis Maci, Burhan Qurbani has transferred the Elisabethan drama into a script, the language of which looks very today and is very artistically shaped. Verses are expected of the viewers without being unreasonable. The two follow the Shakespeare action and dramaturgy, but allow all sorts of freedom in dealing with the material that do not appear arbitrary.

The rose wars, the relentless argument between the York and Lancaster houses, have come to an end in the template in favor of the former. The war follows the outward war. In order to obtain the right to the succession to the throne, Richard III. No means unused and mercilessly switches off its competition.

Not only the language of Maci, but also the high degree of abstraction in the presentation of film events, the handling of the camera and cutting show that the cinema does not want to deny the relationship to stage art in this case. “The film is very theatrical in a way,” says Hmeidan.

And that’s something that she understands a lot about. Born in Syria in 1992, she completed the drama school in Damascus in 2015, before she came to Germany the following year and initially belonged to the exile ensemble, then the regular ensemble of the Berlin Maxim Gorki Theater by 2024. Here she played small and large roles, from Heiner Müller to Bertolt Brecht and towards the contemporary post -migrant drama, which was shaped so decisively by this house and which has helped an undeniable influence on the German -language contemporary theater.

As a laying of the plot from the bloody England of the 15th century to today’s today’s fictional exaggeration, Berlin-Neukölln ruled bloody by rival roadgail was “no animal. So wildly. «In many ways, perhaps a little too grip, described. But how much Neukölln is actually in the film? “Actually not much,” she says quickly. Kenda Hmeidan is at home even in the district, which has been declared a problem in the media,, but it makes it clear: »It is not a film, especially not a documentary about Arab clans or about Neukölln. The film begins with Neukölln, but this track gradually disappears. And the viewer ends up in the inner world of the characters, the lonely characters with their problems. It is not about ›Four Blocks‹, people speak Shakespeare and they conquer this language. «

This transfer of English noble houses to the Arab clan milieu is only one of the cinematic ventures into »no animal. So wild. «. If the Richard, which is always neglected, is characterized in a decisive manner at Shakespeare due to his physical disability, a correspondence had to be found for the film. »The interpretation for the disability of Richard III. In our adaptation it is that she is a woman, «explains Hmeidan. “I think that’s a very strong setting. From the beginning, when I was cast for the role, it was very convincing for me. «

A strong setting, yes. But also a brave decision. In times of identity -political debates, bold interpretations such as these become easy to attack. For Burhan Qurbani and his team, analytical questions seem to have priority over affective sensitivity. In fact, it makes a deep impression on how Kenda Hmeidan plays a Rashida that is forced to prove herself as a fighter through the external circumstances. “In his drama, Shakespeare conveys an idea of ​​Oteress and a figure that tries to escape her invisibility,” she says.

“It is not a” Four Blocks “, people speak Shakespeare.”

Kenda Hmeidan

»Rashida is an unpopular and undesirable child. She is a survival artist. The fact that she is a migrant adds an additional level of the Oternness to the Shakespeare drama. She refuses to be a toy in the hands of a man. She is not ready to adapt to social norms on the way to her goals, but will do everything that is necessary to secure her power in a society dominated by men. «

Due to the complexity of the film, which interweaves questions about ethnic origin, gender and milieu without saying freedom of contradiction that could not exist in reality, a far -reaching political dimension is developed. What shows us in the cinema corresponds to countless small -scale political questions from the present. But actually only because there is something bigger, a basic, fundamental negotiation: How do you achieve, how do you get it upright?

At this year’s Berlinale, where »no animal. So wildly. ”The moderator said in a audience talk, so Kenda Hmeidan says that the film is about Palestine. Probably with the same right you could see a picture for trumpism or generally for the political behavior of the underlying world powers today and yesterday – or for something completely different.

When they made the film two years ago, the political situation in Germany was already tense, shaped by growing polarization, increasing racism and a repressive attitude towards migrant communities, says Hmeidan. But after October 7, 2023 it got worse. The world stood head! The public discourse on Palestine and Gaza is extremely limited, Arabic and Muslim voices are increasingly silent, criminalized and excluded.

This position may be controversial. But it should have become clear that the film not only scratches the surface of political conditions, but also tries to penetrate it, and also that the political mechanisms that determine our living together have not changed so much since Shakespeare.

»The figure of the Rashida becomes a mirror that shows the anger and despair, which grow when whole communities are silenced, and what happens when people are pushed to the edge and caught in places that they call them to be caught between state control, public distrust and painful experience of war and injustice. The throne room of mud, “says Hmeidan, with a view to the image of the film,” the symbolic dirt, “the symbolic dirt in which Rashida is when it gains power is also the mud of the moral compromise, the accomplice, the survival in a country, the silence in exchange for security.”

If theater or cinemas not only put such aspects, but also focus on their work, a piece of freedom is already recovered in the often undesirable debates.

“No animal. So wild. «, France/Germany/Poland 2025. Director: Burhan Qurbani. Book: Enis Maci/Burhan Qurbani. With: Kenda Hmeidan, Verena Altenberger, Hiam Abbass, Mona Zarh Hoshyari Khah, Mehdi Nebbou. 142 min. Start: 8.5.