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.
Writer-director Oliver Kienle gathered a cast of Germany’s most promising young talents for his 2009 drama Stronger Than Blood (
trailer): Award-winning lead Jacob Matschenz was most recently part of the Oscar-nominated film Never Look Away, which had its North American premiere at TIFF in 2018.
He has been sharing the screen twice with his remarkable Stronger Than Blood fellow actress Liv Lisa Fries: in Tom Tykwer’s epic global hit Babylon Berlin and the star-studded and much lauded The Wave in 2008.
Aylin Tezel most certainly is one to watch. Also a former TV Tatort detective, her latest feature film premiered this summer in Locarno. In Patrick Vollrath’s 7500, she plays a flight attendant alongside “captain" Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whose plane is hijacked by terrorists. She might have been recognized by an international audience and by Canadians in particular as part of the CBC spy series X Company. Tezel will soon appear in Uli Edel’s "Der Club der singenden Metzger“, playing a circus artist looking for a better life in America. And more exciting things are to come, as Tezel is shooting her directorial debut film Falling into Place right now.
Burak Yigit’s distinct face you will remember from Victoria, the film famously and dizzyingly shot in one take throughout one never-ending Berlin club night. Yigit also starred in the 2015 Turkish film Mustang, which premiered at Cannes to great acclaim. As many of his colleagues, he oscillates between theatre roles on some of Germany’s best stages and the ever so popular and paying-the-rent German TV crime shows.
Once a gangster, always a gangster? While some actors we’ve introduced here got typecast in the genre, others gained a more diverse portfolio or even left the scene of crime and didn't looked back. Either way, it is their incredible range and talent that makes the three films in GOETHE FILMS series “Stronger Than Blood” stand out from the crowd.
by Philipp Gilly &
Jutta Brendemühl
promo image Trans Film
