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Press Kit - Memento Films International

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SHAHADA<br />

A film by Burhan Qurbani<br />

BERLIN, SECOND GENERATION


CAST<br />

Maryam /// Maryam Zaree<br />

Sammi /// Jeremias Acheampong<br />

Ismail /// Carlo Ljubek<br />

Leyla /// Marija Škaricic<br />

Daniel /// Sergej Moya<br />

Vedat /// Vedat Erincin<br />

Sarah /// Anne Ratte-Polle<br />

Renan /// Nora Abdel-Maksoud<br />

Sinan /// Burak Yigit<br />

Amira // Yollette Thomas<br />

Kinay /// Alexandros (Alexi) Gehrckens<br />

Rainer /// Gerdy Zint<br />

CREW<br />

Writer, Director /// Burhan Qurbani<br />

Co-writer /// Ole Giec<br />

Produced by /// Susa Kusche, Uwe Spiller,<br />

Robert Gold (bittersuess pictures)<br />

Producer /// Leif Alexis<br />

Co-Producers /// ZDF/Das kleine Fernsehspiel (Burkhard Althoff)<br />

Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (Nico Hofmann)<br />

In association with /// Hessen Invest<br />

Cinematographer /// Yoshi Heimrath<br />

Editor /// Simon Blasi<br />

Composer /// Daniel Sus<br />

Set Designer /// Barbara Falkner<br />

Costume Designer /// Irene Ip<br />

Make-up Artist /// Anja Heinemann, Sandra Meyer<br />

Sound Designer /// Jörg Theil<br />

Mixer /// k13<br />

Credits Design /// weareflink<br />

Casting Director /// Karen Wendland<br />

Line Producer /// Christine Günther<br />

Post-Production /// PICTORION das werk Gmbh<br />

PRODUCTION CONTACTS<br />

BITTERSUESS PICTURES<br />

Zionskirchstr. 73<br />

10119 Berlin - Germany<br />

Tel.: 49 30 285 376 600<br />

Fax: 49 30 285 376 633<br />

info@bittersuesspictures.de<br />

WORLD SALES AND FESTIVALS<br />

MEMENTO FILMS INTERNATIONAL<br />

9 Cité Paradis - 75010 Paris - France<br />

Tel.: +33 1 53 34 90 20<br />

sales@memento-films.com<br />

festival@memento-films.com<br />

www.memento-films.com<br />

INTERNATIONAL PRESS IN BERLIN<br />

ALIBI COMMUNICATIONS<br />

Brigitta Portier<br />

Raymond Lauwersstraat 37 a<br />

1560 Hoeilaart - Belgium<br />

Tel.: +32 477 98 25 84<br />

alibi-com@skynet.be<br />

SHAHADA<br />

A film by Burhan Qurbani<br />

90 minutes - Color - German, Turkish - Germany<br />

RED ONE blowup to 35mm - Cinemascope 1:2,35 - Dolby 5.1.


SYNOPSIS<br />

Berlin, today.<br />

During a razzia for clandestine employees in a<br />

warehouse, the fates of three young German-born<br />

Muslims collide.<br />

Ismail, a police officer of Turkish descent, is about to<br />

break his loyalty towards his badge and his wife as he<br />

finds himself attracted to illegal immigrant Leyla.<br />

Sammi is torn between his Muslim faith and his<br />

irresistible desire for one of his male co-workers, despite<br />

his friends’ violent homophobia. He is appeased by<br />

the local Imam, a liberal religious leader revered by the<br />

community, who is going through a crisis of his own: his<br />

daughter, Maryam, is moving into an ultraconservative<br />

direction although she has been raised so tolerantly.<br />

The three of them must find their place between faith<br />

and modern life in a contemporary Western society,<br />

between the luring liberated lifestyle and tradition.


BURHAN QURBANI ON SHAHADA<br />

A LITTLE PRAYER ON THE WAY<br />

An image from my childhood – one still vivid in my mind:<br />

<br />

I am about 10 years old. We live with my grandfather in the countryside – alone.<br />

My mother works in the city: it’s not easy for an unmarried foreign woman to<br />

find a job here.<br />

My parents’ separation during the Diaspora caused a scandal. My grandfather<br />

traveled all the way from Afghanistan to support his divorced daughter and her<br />

two young sons. The years of war, the loss of his eldest son, the time he’d spent in<br />

prison, had turned my grandfather into a religious man.<br />

As every day, he gets up before dawn to pray.<br />

As every day, he wakes us boys up for school. He puts butter on our toast, then<br />

ushers us to the door. But just as we’re about to leave the house, he says a few<br />

words. A phrase in Arabic. A sentence we have to remember, to repeat again and<br />

again until we know it by heart. Then he adds new words to those we already<br />

know. The fragments add up, constituting a prayer.<br />

And so we learnt, over the weeks, the Fatiha, Islam’s opening praise to the Lord:<br />

“In the name of Allah, most merciful, most gracious God.”<br />

Discreetly, he continued with the Islamic creed, the Muslim declaration of faith:<br />

“There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.”<br />

This is the Shahada.<br />

THE JOURNEY BEGINS<br />

These are the earliest memories of my religious education. My grandfather has<br />

passed away since. But my conception of Islam is still influenced by him, by the<br />

loving way he shared his faith with us, the way he passed his traditions down to us.<br />

And still I must agree with Ephraim Kishon, the Jewish satirist, who once said<br />

that nothing is more difficult than being both enlightened and religious. Speaking<br />

from personal experience, as a practicing Muslim brought up in tradition, life in<br />

Germany was never easy.<br />

I would lie if I said that Allah and TV – the sacred and the profane – have always<br />

cohabited peacefully for me. I have discovered only in recent years that the<br />

spiritual education I enjoyed as a child and as a teenager cannot be discarded. I<br />

can therefore now commit to Islam without conflicting with myself.<br />

My graduation film is my attempt at reconciling the contradictions of the two<br />

cultures I grew up in. To see the German and the Islamic parts of me combine<br />

on film.<br />

This is the Shahada.


A FILM ABOUT PEOPLE<br />

SHAHADA is not a film about religion. It was never meant to be didactic. I<br />

didn’t want to take the viewer’s hand and tell him: “Islam works in this or that<br />

way”.<br />

Rather, I wanted to tell stories about people. People who are, of course, part<br />

of a certain community. And casually, I approached the subject of their shared<br />

religion and culture, as well as the internal conflicts and contradictions that<br />

come with being Muslim in Germany.<br />

I wanted to make a film about people in crisis, in extreme situations.<br />

A father-daughter story; a story of guilt and atonement; a story about the value<br />

of one’s own life; a story about sexual awakening:<br />

Stories that each spectator – independent of their religious belief – can relate to<br />

and think: “I know this. I have felt that way too once.”<br />

It was important for me to explore how the environment, socialization and<br />

religion affect the characters, in a good or bad direction.<br />

To broaden my statement: SHAHADA is not a film about religion. But the<br />

religious affiliation of the characters influences their actions and their decisions<br />

in a very certain way. It is about the path they choose.<br />

This is the Shahada.


© Alfred Steffen<br />

BURHAN QURBANI<br />

WRITER / DIRECTOR<br />

8<br />

BIOGRAPHY<br />

On Christmas Eve, 1979, a day before the Red Army marched into Afghanistan,<br />

Burhan Qurbani’s parents fled their home to seek political asylum in Germany.<br />

Growing up, Burhan moved around Germany to follow his father, who worked<br />

for the US Army.<br />

After completing his high school diploma in 2000 in Stuttgart, he started<br />

working in the theatre, first as a dramatist’s assistant, then as assistant director.<br />

In 2002, he enrolled at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg to study film<br />

directing.<br />

Burhan’s short films have been selected by film festivals around the world and<br />

won a number of prizes, including, in 2008, the German Camera Award and the<br />

German Film Critics’ Award for ILLUSION. The same year he was honored<br />

with the “Black Pearl” for “Best Newcomer of the Year” from the Middle East<br />

<strong>International</strong> Film Festival.<br />

SHAHADA, Burhan’s graduation project from the Akademie, is his first<br />

feature-length film.<br />

FILMOGRAPHY<br />

2007 ILLUSION (Short Film)<br />

2006 „Vögel ohne Beine“ (TV Series)<br />

2005 STILL ON EARTH (Short Film)<br />

2004 NUR WENN SIE SCHLAFEN (Short Film)<br />

2003 HEART SHAPED BOX (Short Film)


MEMENTO FILMS INTERNATIONAL<br />

9 Cité Paradis - 75010 Paris - France | Tel.: +33 1 53 34 90 20 | sales@memento-films.com | www.memento-films.com

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