THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
It is first of all a haircut: bleached and permed bangs that form a toupee above the forehead. Then a quickdraw and an attitude: a fake fur coat, a small silk scarf, rhinestones on the jogging. Rabiye Kurnaz (played by stand-up comedian Meltem Kaptan, winner of the Best Performance Award at the Berlinale), a German housewife of Turkish origin, dispassionately married to a local Mercedes factory worker, farms low Nadine de Rothschild-style coquetry in her apartment in the popular districts of Bremen.
In 2001, as the US government intensified its war on terrorism, her eldest son, Murat, 19, was arrested without evidence. Detained in the Guantanamo camp for terrorism (where he will remain until 2006), he has neither recourse nor the right to communicate.
To tell this real and painful episode of post-9/11 history, the filmmaker of East German origin and constitutional judge in Brandenburg Andreas Dresen follows, day after day, the legal battle of Rabiye Kurnaz. Breaking away from the story of the son, In the hell of Guantanamo (Fayard, 2007), for the benefit of the mother’s point of view, he transforms it into a comedy of situations full of pitfalls that hold together thanks to the combat of a beginner. Engaged in a struggle beyond anything she has known up to now, Rabiye Kurnaz will attack the impossible: the President of the United States, George W. Bush, in Washington.
fairy tale out of hell
Supported by Bernhard Docke (Alexander Scheer), a lawyer who takes the case free of charge for the public good, she is transported to a world whose codes she does not know, caught in the nets of this democracy which is bogged down before her, in the United States, but also in Germany and Turkey. Far from the iconostasis of Mother Courage, with drawn, tragic and panting features, she advances with a naivety that allows her to dream of victory.
The film marks a clear desire to stay as close as possible to the trivial, to the small detail, to make the most of it and make the crusade led by the Kurnaz-Docke duo perceptible. With, always, a total refusal to show grief and complaint. Surprised by Rabiye’s first tears, right in the middle of the film, quick and sober, during a speech in Washington. The only woman among men to speak out publicly in defense of a son imprisoned in Guantanamo.
A comedy of situations full of pitfalls that hold together by the grace of a beginner’s fight
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