Last time I met him Fatih Akin was in Berlin at the beginning of 2020 when he presented the Golden Glove. He was slightly annoyed, probably because most of the audience could not stand the overly harsh images – the main character is still a serial killer – and left the hall early. On the contrary, this year Thessaloniki he seemed much more relaxed and happy. The serial killer turned … into a gangster, and the audience responded with thunderous applause. This Thursday “Gold of the Rhine” in theaters, and the Turkish-born German director tells us about his new (real) hero, rapper Xatar, who has taken the German hip-hop scene by storm in recent years.

“Life always writes the craziest scenarios. Personally, I’m not the Woody Allen type who writes a script every year that is similar or related to the previous one. I’m sick of this kind of stuff. Now I create my original material every 5-7 years, but I don’t want to shoot so rarely, so I look for stories in other places,” says Akin. This time he found his hero in Jiwar Hadjabi (Khatar is his artistic name), a Kurdish refugee from Iran who, as a child, came to Germany with his mother and grew up in immigrant ghettos. The transition to illegality was not long in coming.

“The truth is that I don’t know the world well, I don’t know anything about what it’s like to sell drugs. But he told me everything. The first few days he wasn’t on set, we put some of the actors in costumes and when he saw them he said, “That wasn’t the case, everyone was in overalls back then,” and we filmed it. again. In general, it is difficult to find a balance in biographies: on the one hand, to respect the lives of real people, and on the other hand, not to have “respect” in the sense of glorification. In my films, I always love the characters and get attached to them, but I also try to keep some distance without deifying or judging them. For me, the best way to achieve this is humor.”

The difficulty of biographies lies in the balance: on the one hand, to respect the lives of real people, and on the other hand, not to have any “respect” in the sense of heroism.

In the film, we see a young Jaguar trying to earn his place in the world until a path of crime leads him to jail, but that’s where he first takes hip-hop seriously. “Rap has always been the music of the poor. When you’re out of the ghetto, there aren’t many exits. Theoretically, education is the path, but in reality it is a myth. To escape, you will either become an athlete, or a criminal, or a rapper. Also a “cliché” in hip-hop is the loss of a father. This happened to Busta Rhymes, Tupac, Xatar and many others. Perhaps this is also one of the reasons for the great aggressiveness of the lyrics, the absence of a father figure.

And Akin himself is a connoisseur of this particular musical language. “Of course, it helped that I knew and listened to hip-hop for almost my entire life. In fact, this is the only music that was born in front of me in the mid-80s, and then, in the 90s, I constantly listened to NWA, Ice Cube, LL Cool J and many others. It was there that I learned English from the vinyl covers with the lyrics written on them. Later came gangsta rap and I realized that I didn’t understand it because I was too old, I was out of the game. When I was doing research for the film, I knew I had to dig deeper and somehow dig out my youth. I think rap today, even in Greece with LEX and the rest, is essentially oral history.”

But what about Fatih Akin’s own art, cinema that has struggled in recent years, juggling between the small screen and empty theatres? “Obviously, this is a very complex issue, and I’m trying to figure it out. This film, for example, became a big hit in Germany and I don’t know how it happened; if I knew, I would do it again,” he replies with a laugh and continues: “Now I have my own production company. I understand that the money spent every year has to come back somehow. In addition, the recognition of a feature film at various festivals no longer seems to have the weight of the past. And when you are the owner of the hall, your seats cannot be empty. What I categorically do not want is for the cinema to become a bourgeois art, for the elite, as opera is commonly considered to be. Cinema is not opera,” he says, adding that “our mission now is to reconnect with the audience, especially the younger ones. As far as cinema is concerned, this year everything, everywhere, all at once proved it, a really crazy film that was a big hit with young people. It’s the same with the new Top Gun.

As for the competition with the small screen, Akin notes: “The issue is that the cinema offers something that is not at home. I also watch TV, I love shows like Euphoria or Best Boy. But it’s a completely different sport.