Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg Campus Magazin 23/24

ALUMNI IN FOCUS
I think, in terms of content, the German film landscape
is in crisis because we still don’t know for whom we are
actually making the films and series. Commercial cinema
films are aimed at very specific target groups. It
is no different in the TV landscape. There it belongs to
the category of crime thriller and in the cinema to romantic
comedy or just comedy. German films don’t stay
close to the audience in terms of storytelling, they underchallenge
them, they impose chewed-up content on
them that entertains but offers nothing new, nothing visionary.
I would like to see the standards of other countries,
such as Scandinavia, France or Korea, which is way
ahead as a film country at the moment. In Germany, the
same narrative voices, the same producers and funding
agencies are always in demand, and that’s why hardly anything
moves forward. We need a discourse in which society
can find itself. That’s why the discussion about diversity
is very important. It represents a free, very broad
concept full of ideas, visions and utopias. Some filmmakers
don’t appropriate diversity out of an inner understanding,
but because they get much more funding for
diverse stories. For that reason alone, I think the discourse
is wrong. Above all, the implementation is wrong,
because the money should primarily go to the producers
who have been trying for years and decades to tell
"milieu stories", as they used to be called.
career because I am a migrant or a woman. Until today,
both my migration background and my being a woman
are rather hurdles in a society that is still very patriarchal
and discriminatory. I have spent most of my life in
Germany, with annual stays in Kurdistan. I think mostly
in German and probably dream in German – but I feel
Kurdish. But I do not have an identity crisis because of
this and don’t feel any inner turmoil. However, it has always
been suggested to me that there can only be one or
the other. But I think that every person can combine different
identities.
Am Set von SAM - EIN SACHSE
You are also a lecturer at the Filmakademie. Do
you have the impression that the students are
dealing more openly and naturally with the
topic of diversity?
The new generation is very hopeful. Because they have
grown up with the topic, approaching it goes without
saying. Our generation was different. In Germany, I have
noticed a lack of lightness and natural ease in dealing
with the topic. Everybody wants to do everything right,
and that weighs everything down. The process is exhausting
because a lot of things have to be reviewed. It is
still a struggle, although it should be normality.
Does it bother you when you are pigeonholed as
a “director with a migration background”? How
does this label affect your work?
I don’t have a problem with it because it’s the truth. I
have a migration background, but that is not my identity.
I am more complex as a person and have many other
worlds in me. It only bothers me when I am reduced to
this “label” or when it is insinuated that I have made this
20
In the future, FABW would like to simplify access
to film studies, break down barriers and encourage
young people from different social backgrounds
and with qualifications beyond the
“Abitur” to study film. How do you judge this
approach from your personal history?
Access should be made easier, but not only access to
studying at the Filmakademie, but access to being an artist
in itself, to art as a way of life, so to speak. Access to
artistic professions is certainly not only created through
an easier way of applying. We have to think further:
What value does art have in society, in politics? How
and where is art taught? In primary school or when you
get to the upper school? The demand for artistic studies