Neukölln Unlimited
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Neukölln Unlimited |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2010 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Agostino Imondi Dietmar Ratsch |
| script | Agostino Imondi |
| production | Arek Gielnik Dietmar Ratsch Nico Hain |
| music |
Eike Hosenfeld Moritz Denis Tim Stanzel |
| camera | Dietmar Ratsch |
| cut | Agostino Imondi Lars Späth |
| occupation | |
| |
Neukölln Unlimited is a German documentary from 2010 . The filmmakers Agostino Imondi and Dietmar Ratsch accompany the siblings Hassan, Lial and Maradona through the Berlin district of Neukölln with their cameras .
The film was co-produced by the rbb in cooperation with Arte and financially supported by the Filmförderungsanstalt , the DFFF , the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg as well as the MFG Filmförderung and the MEDIA program. The working title was "Life's a battle".
action
The siblings Hassan (18), Lial (19) and Maradona (14) are talented musicians and breakdancers who have lived in the Neukölln district of Berlin since early childhood. They grew up with hip-hop and breakdancing, that's their language, that's their passion.
Her family comes from Lebanon and has been threatened with deportation for 16 years. Therefore, Lial and Hassan develop a plan to use their art to secure the family's livelihood so that they can legally stay in the country.
Tensions arise under pressure: Lial and Hassan compete for the breadwinner role within the family. Maradona, on the other hand, takes a different path and is repeatedly suspended from school. Torn between the ambitious lifestyle of his older siblings and the street life with his buddies, he stands at the crossroads between motivation and resignation.
The tide only turns when Maradona surprisingly succeeds in qualifying for a TV casting show: If he wins the prize of 100,000 euros, he could be the one to secure the family's future.
music and dance
The soundtrack was composed by the Berlin composers Eike Hosenfeld , Moritz Denis and Tim Stanzel. The musicians were inspired by the hip-hop and breakdance culture with which the protagonists of the film identify. In order to underline the multi-ethnic everyday life of Neukölln, the musicians mixed modern beats with traditional-oriental sounds.
Other songs in the film include original music by Hassan and Lial's pop band No IBN .
In addition to the various sub-genres of street dance , other types of dance are also used, such as modern dance and expressionist dance. These are used by the protagonists of the film to express their attitude towards life. For Neukölln Unlimited, these dances are therefore a cinematic metaphor for the coming of age of the three siblings.
Animation elements
In order to make the experience of the deportation and the feeling of foreignness in the "home country" Lebanon tangible for the viewer and to take him on an emotional journey, the memory level was implemented in parts in animated images. The comic style is based on graffiti , which is an important artistic means of expression in hip-hop and breakdance culture.
The comic artist Benjamin Kniebe was responsible for the drawings. The individual pictures were then animated by the animator Julia Dufek. Since Neukölln Unlimited is a low-budget film, complicated animation was avoided and the drama was created with the help of music and sound design, and not least through Hassan's story.
Locations
In the film, the gym of the Rütli school is the venue for a breakdance battle in which B-Boy Maradona takes part. Other well-known locations in the film are the East Side Gallery , the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park and the former techno club E-Werk .
Festivals
The film premiered at the Berlinale 2010 in the Generation 14Plus section , where it also won the Transparent Bear for best feature film.
- 12th Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema
- 23rd Singapore International Film Festival
- Sarajevo Film Festival 2010
- CineSparks Film Festival for Young People, Brisbane 2010
- 12th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival , "Next Generation" section
- 11th Seoul International Youth Film Festival, section "It's ok to be different"
- 6th Tel Aviv International Children Film Festival
Awards and nominations
- Berlinale 2010 : Transparent Bear for best feature film in the Generation 14Plus section (won)
- German Film Critics' Prize 2011 (nominated)
- Peace Film Prize 2010 (nominated)
- Buster Film Festival 2010, Copenhagen: for best documentary (won)
- Chicago International Children's Film Festival: for best feature documentary (won)
- Movies That Matter Film Festival, The Hague; MovieSquad All Rights Award for best youth film (won)
- German Documentary Award (nominated)
reception
After its premiere and cinema release, the film received mostly positive reviews from the press:
"Neukölln Unlimited shows that behind tough statements there are extremely differentiated people who have developed an impressive stand-up mentality," writes Bernd Buder from film-dienst . This is a documentary film that “remains close to its protagonists” and “records their contradictions without embellishment”.
"Neukölln Unlimited is not only a migration drama in which the arbitrariness of the German deportation practice becomes clear, it is also a breakdance film," explains Jan Kedves from the taz . The fact that the film has a “slightly megalomaniac” title shows that directors Agostino Imondi and Dietmar Ratsch “wanted to get serious about the promise they made to Hassan at the beginning of the shooting: that it would be a great film”.
"Imodi and Ratsch have created a lively, visually ambitious portrait of what is probably the most notorious Berlin neighborhood," writes Nadine Lange in Tagesspiegel ; Above all, Neukölln unlimited is “a clever contribution to the often heated debate about migrant children”.
Hannah Pilarczyk of Spiegel Online thinks the film "should cause astonishment among multicultural skeptics". During the film, Maradona slowly takes center stage: “You start to worry about him, but also to get annoyed that he doesn't respect the commitment of his siblings. In this way he ultimately proves that the most media-effective story is still that of the difficult, always endangered integration. But that's by no means the most representative story - and because the Neukölln Unlimited makes it just as emphatically clear, the film deserves all the enthusiasm. "
Anna-E. Younes from di.wan asks why the film remains stuck in a neoliberal logic, "in which" failure "is ascribed to the individual, but not just as much to the" system "?" ... Neukölln Unlimited is therefore "also a call for issues such as Integration, deportation, social exclusion and denial have to be addressed more often - perhaps this time with fewer effects, but with more content - even if it is sometimes harder to digest and does not come to too many cinemas. "
Web links
- Neukölln Unlimited in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Official German site
- Dossier Neukölln Unlimited at the Federal Agency for Civic Education
- The film is available online at ARTE + 7 until March 2, 2012
- Neukölln Unlimited at filmportal.de
- Video from Deutsche Welle TV
Individual evidence
- ↑ filmportal.de
- ↑ filmstarts.de
- ↑ Berlinale press release ( Memento of the original from April 29, 2014 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.
- ↑ 12th Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema
- ↑ 23rd Singapore International Film Festival ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2011 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.
- ↑ CineSparks 2010 program ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Homepage Association of German Film Critics ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Peace Film Prize homepage ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Bread and Games in the Third Millennium. In: taz. April 8, 2010.
- ↑ Dance to Last. In: Tagesspiegel. April 8, 2010.
- ↑ Kiez documentary "Neukölln Unlimited": Always trouble with Maradona. In: Spiegel Online. April 7, 2010.
- ↑ Neukölln is completely multicultural: A culture-critical consideration of the film 'Life is a battle' aka 'Neukölln Unlimited'. on: Diwan-Berlin. July 2010.
