Can an actor make a life in “crime”? Like a James Gandolfini, can he or she overcome genre type-casting and launch an international career? Let’s take a closer look at the intriguing array of actors, many of them Germans with an immigrant background, in the latest GOETHE FILMS program this October, which features three gangster films: Dealer by Thomas Arslan, Chiko by Özgur Yildirim, and Stronger Than Blood by Oliver Kienle.
Chiko’s titular lead character is played by Dennis Moschitto, who is of Italian and Turkish extraction. Already a well-known face on German TV, the film (
trailer) pushed Moschitto’s career to the next level. Fatih Akin, who produced Chiko, seems to be a constant in Moschitto's acting career.
He starred in Akin’s films Soul Kitchen and the recent and internationally renowned political thriller Into the Fade. In the latter, Moschitto plays a supporting but crucial role as a Hamburg lawyer taking on the far right.You will remember him from the culture clash comedy Almanya, which the Goethe-Institut Toronto presented at the EUFFTO 2011, winning the audience award. Proving his huge range, he appeared in Til Schweiger main stream comedy hit Zweiohrkueken as well as in Wild Mouse, which was in competition at the Berlinale 2017.The former philosophy student is also the author of two books on the hacker scene.
Moritz Bleibtreu’s career too is closely tied to Fatih Akin (In July; Soul Kitchen). His acting career was going well long before he starred in Chiko, playing Franka Potente’s helpless gangster boyfriend in Run Lola Run, one of the most successful and widely known German films ever. You can often see Bleibtreu in “criminal” roles --see Knockin on Heaven's Door, Baader Meinhof Complex, and working again with Chiko director Özgur Yildirim in Only God Can Judge Me in 2017. Most recently, he has appeared on the other side of the law in a series of Ferdinand von Schirach literary adaptations, portraying a defense lawyer struggling with moral dilemmas. Bleibtreu, born into an acting family, has huge comedic talent — often playing the lovable doofus— and is a popular choice in kids’ films such as The Pasta Detectives (perhaps helped by the fact that he was an au-pair in Paris after dropping out of school). As the lead in arthouse director Oskar Roehler’s drama Elementary Particles he received the Berlinale Silver Bear as best actor in 2006.
Fahri Yardim, recently chosen by German Films as one of their “Faces," did not leave the crime genre after shooting Chiko, but he also changed sides. Audiences took note of his portrayal as an inspector in Germany’s longest running and most successful TV crime series Tatort (this one set in Hamburg), and appears as inspector Erol Birkan in
Christian Alvart's Netflix series Dogs of Berlin. He recently updated his portfolio with shooting the comedy series Jerks (also starring Denis Moschitto), in which he plays a fictional version of himself.
And if you loved Hans Löw as apocalypse man in Ulrich Köhler’s
IN MY ROOM at Cannes & TIFF18 … you might not recognize him 10 years earlier as a small-time dealer here.
To be continued with Stronger Than Blood ...
by Philipp Gilly &
Jutta Brendemühl
promo image Falcom Media
