Against the wall

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Movie
Original title Against the wall
Country of production Germany , Turkey
original language German , Turkish , English
Publishing year 2004
length 121 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director Fatih Akin
script Fatih Akin
production Stefan Schubert
Ralph Schwingel
music Alexander Hacke
Maceo Parker
Daniel Puente Encina (with Niños Con Bombas and Polvorosa )
camera Rainer Klausmann
cut Andrew Bird
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
On the other side

Against the Wall is a multi-award-winning feature film by the German-Turkish director Fatih Akin . The film tells the love story of a young Turkish woman who was born and raised in Germany and who enters into a fictitious marriage with an alcoholic and drug addict compatriot in order to escape the moral standards of her parents.

The film is the first part of the trilogy Love, Death and the Devil, which continued with On the Other Side in 2007 and concluded with The Cut in 2014 .

action

Cahit, a 40-year-old German-Turk from Hamburg , drives into a wall, alcoholized and unrestrained. During the time in the hospital he met Sibel, who is also there because of a suicide attempt . Sibel, a young Turkish woman, rebels against her traditional Turkish parents. She wants to live her own life, says: “I want to live, I want to dance, I want to fuck. And not just with one guy. ”In order to achieve this independence from her strict father and her dominant brother, she only sees the option of entering into a fictitious marriage. Cahit, who has "thrown away" his Turkish mother tongue, reacts aggressively to every question about his mysterious past and earns his pocket money by collecting bottles in the alternative club " Fabrik ", agrees after Sibel attempts another suicide. When he asks their parents for their daughter's hand, he pretends to be the manager of the restaurant where he works.

After the wedding he looks on indifferently as Sibel leads a carefree and unrestrained life after moving in with him. But gradually he realizes that he feels more for Sibel, that he loves her. His affection goes so far that he kills a previous one-night stand Sibels in affect. The victim had previously irritated him for minutes and finally offered him money for the service he received like a pimp. Cahit is sentenced to several years in prison. Sibel, who has now fallen in love with Cahit herself, is rejected by her family. She promises Cahit to wait for him and moves to Istanbul , where she works in a hotel where her cousin Selma is employed as a manager.

There she succumbs to drug excesses and dies in her grief. One night she is raped under drugs and almost killed by three men she provoked earlier. A taxi driver finds them. However, when Cahit visits her after his release, she has put her life in order and started a new relationship. It is unclear whether the daughter emerged from this relationship or was a consequence of the rape. After two days together, the two of them meet at the bus station in order to travel from there to Cahit's birthplace, Mersin , and start a new life there. When Sibel did not show up at the agreed time, Cahit went to Mersin alone.

background

The film was shot in the " Fabrik " in Hamburg-Altona and on the Heiligengeistfeld in the Hamburg district of St. Pauli . The recordings in the hospital were made in the Asklepios Klinik Nord in the Langenhorn district . It was also shot in Istanbul . The scenes in the bar (including where Cahit Sibel's earlier one-night stand kills) were filmed in the “Zoe Bar” (Clemens-Schultz-Str., Today the “Möwe Sturzflug” bar is located there).

The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 12, 2004 and was shown in German cinemas on March 11. It was shown in Austria from April 2, 2004 and in Switzerland from May 6, 2004.

On the second weekend after its cinema release, it grossed almost half a million euros at the German box office. By the end of 2004, over 760,000 visitors were counted there.

Against the Wall was the first German film in 17 years to win a Golden Bear at the Berlinale.

Fatih Akin invited more than 350 actresses to the casting for the role of Sibel Güner . The role was eventually given to Sibel Kekilli , who was discovered in a Cologne shopping center. Three of the women who also auditioned for the role can be seen in a scene in which they sit on a couch and talk about their husbands. The role of Sibel's brother Yilmaz was cast by Fatih Akin with his own brother Cem Akin .

Birol Ünel did not do military service in Turkey and could therefore not travel to his home country without risking arrest. Only at the last minute did the Turkish parliament decide to allow entry without the threat of sanctions in order to have the film completed.

After the first cut, the film had a running time of four hours and was eventually shortened to 121 minutes.

In order to reduce production costs and at the same time look more natural, most actors brought their own clothes to the set.

Following the example of classical tragedies , the film was divided into musical acts. Selim Sesler can be seen with an orchestra on the banks of the Bosphorus . The singer, who sings the two popular folk songs Saniye'm and Şu Karşıki Dağda Bir Fener Yanar , is the actress Idil Üner .

Akin worked with the martial artist Emanuel Bettencourt for the choreography of the fights in the film, as in some of his earlier films .

The German free TV premiere of the film was on October 23, 2006 at 8:40 p.m. on Arte .

Criticism and votes

The film deals with two major themes:

First there is the question of the identity of the Turkish immigrant Cahit, who has lived in Germany for 30 years, and the young Turkish woman Sibel, who was born in Germany and was brought up traditionally in Turkish, surrounded by a cosmopolitan German society. “You seldom felt such a thirst for life in the cinema: In his award-winning film 'Gegen die Wand', the Hamburg director Fatih Akin skilfully and uncompromisingly creates the highly emotional drama of two German Turks in search of identity,” writes Oliver Hüttmann in Spiegel Online .

The second subject is the love story between Cahit and Sibel, which is rich in feelings and confusion, misunderstandings and misconceptions. Fritz Göttler wrote about this in the Süddeutsche Zeitung : “Insane love is the subject of this film. And self-destruction. And: love = self-destruction. Fatih Akin thinks of Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison , the masters of poetic self-destruction. The equation works, so we are suggested, only with the others, the strangers, the Turks. So the film takes us on a trip into this world, there is archaic life - blood, sweat, tears - there a scene tends to end in excess. "

What connects both topics is self-destruction: through excessive alcoholism, through driving amok against a wall, through attempted suicide and through violence against others. Self-destruction as a rebellion against and to break out of the given identity, self-destruction out of love.

The solution that the film offers is to return to Turkey . Cahit changes noticeably through the love for Sibel and she lets him survive the time in prison and become abstinent. Sibel experiences the climax of her self-destruction in Istanbul before she puts her life in order. The answer to the question as to why it does this remains with the film. Whether the return to Turkey is an acceptable solution for Sibel and Cahit is up to the viewer to decide for himself. But it's the solution that both characters have the strength to achieve.

Akin succeeds in telling the story very realistically through intensive imagery. It is accompanied by a soundtrack that fully absorbs its contrast: Depeche Mode versus Turkish folk song.

After the Golden Bear was awarded and the leading actress Sibel Kekilli's past became known, the discussion in the German media, especially the tabloids, initially focused on her involvement in pornographic films. The fact that Gegen die Wand was the first successful German film in the race for the Golden Bear in years was largely ignored. Michael Althen commented: “A golden bear, a shameful campaign , now you will see what all this brings and you can possibly see how the film undermines all expectations. Because the curious love story of two failed suicides not only has a disturbing power due to the unconditionality with which it is told, but also a surprising tenderness for its two characters, who actually feel like completely different, much more direct feelings. "

Akin had a kind of love-hate relationship with Birol Ünel during the filming :

“Cahit's characterization as a 'lost soul' was tailored to Birol - even if this role contains many of my longings and needs to break norms. Like Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison, he pays homage to poetic self-destruction. "

- Fatih Akin

Awards

The film Against the Wall received the following honors:

Adaptations

The script was adapted by Ludger Vollmer as an opera in German and Turkish; the premiere was on November 28, 2008 at the Bremen Theater .

Since 2007, among other things, the studio stage of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin has performed a spoken theater version of the film directed by Mathias Huhn . This comes from Armin Petras .

In September 2011 the Göttingen Young Theater performed a condensed version of Gegen die Wand under the direction of Andreas Döring .

2012 was the Theater Konstanz another theater production performed at this stage play which led cabaret artist Serdar Somuncu Director.

literature

  • Jochen Neubauer: Turkish Germans, Kanaksters and Germans. Identity and perception of others in film and literature: Fatih Akin, Thomas Arslan, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Zafer Şenocak and Feridun Zaimoğlu. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2011, pp. 224–274
  • Daniela Berghahn: Head-On (Against the Wall). Palgrave MacMillan (BFI Film Classic series), Basingstoke 2015, ISBN 978-1-84457-674-6
  • Mine Eren: Cosmopolitan Filmmaking: Fatih Akin's 'In July' and 'Head-On'. In: Sabine Hake, Barbara Mennel (Eds.): Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens. Berghahn Books, New York 2012, pp. 175–185
  • Stephen Brockmann: Gegen die Wand (2004) or Germany Goes Multicultural. In: A Critical History of German Film. Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge 2010. pp. 479-487

Web links

Wikiquote: Against the Wall  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Gegen die Wand . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , February 2004 (PDF; test number: 97 164 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Gegen die Wand . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ Soundtrack according to the Internet Movie Database
  4. ↑ a b c Filming locations according to the Internet Movie Database
  5. ↑ Filmap. Retrieved July 24, 2017 .
  6. ↑ a b Start dates according to the Internet Movie Database
  7. ↑ a b budget and box office results according to the Internet Movie Database
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h Background information according to the Internet Movie Database
  9. ↑ Emanuel Bettencourt: "Back then, Mark and I always watched the Jackie Chan films in the cinema on the Reeperbahn" - Interview at jungemedienhamburg.wordpress.com, accessed on August 29, 2010
  10. ↑ Oliver Hüttmann: Breathless powerlessness drama. In: Spiegel Online , March 12, 2004.
  11. ↑ a b Fritz Göttler: Lust for Life. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 10, 2010.
  12. ↑ “Phantasmagorias of Return. Original fantasies of the second and third generation of Turkish migrants in Germany (using the example of the films by Fatih Akins) ” , Dr. phil. Klaus Müller-Richter, International Research Center for Cultural Studies , 2006
  13. ↑ Film review ( Memento of the original from September 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , angelaufen.de - The film press review @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.angelaufen.de
  14. ↑ Michael Althen : "Against the Wall": The Berlinale winner is now in the cinema. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 9, 2004.
  15. ↑ Andrew Bailey: Cinema Now. Taschen 2007 p. 28
  16. ↑ Advance notice of the opera by Theater Bremen (accessed on March 12, 2008)
  17. ↑ Benno Schirrmeister: This music liberates. In: the daily newspaper , November 30, 2008.
  18. ^ Against the wall on the workshop stage of the Theater Konstanz, accessed on November 30, 2013.