“Berlin Alexanderplatz” had its premiere at the Berlinale 2020. Now the film is finally in movie theatres. The German Press Agency dpa interviewed director Burhan Qurbani:
The novel Berlin Alexanderplatz is a classic of German literature. Rainer Werner Fassbinder turned it into a TV series and now director Burhan Qurbani has adapted it again. Getting a grasp on the novel, however, was not always easy for him, until the right time came along.
dpa: Some people enjoy reading Berlin Alexanderplatz, others struggle through it. How about you?
Qurbani: It was agonizing for me.
The book was the subject of my final school exam and I just battled my way through it. Maybe at that age you’re just not so open to what the book has to offer. I was busy with other things, like being 18, being cool, meeting girls. It wasn’t until a few years later when I came to Berlin that I picked up the novel again during my move.
dpa: And then what?
Qurbani: I began leafing through it. Then I devoured it in a completely different way. That’s when I realized that I wanted to make something out of it. But from the start it was clear to me – just because of Fassbinder’s long shadow – that I didn’t want to make a film set in that era. Instead, we wanted to imagine it in the here and now.
dpa: How much of it will we recognize?
Qurbani: I think if you’ve read the book carefully, you’ll recognize quite a lot. But for us, the book was more of a platform to implement our own idea. What totally fascinated me is the novel’s form: the collage technique, Döblin’s frenetic language, the religious and moral imagery that he builds up. Our film is mainly limited to the actual plot: the love triangle, the ménage-a-trois between Franz, Mitzi, and Reinhold. How they meet, tear at each other. And how Franz Biberkopf has to find himself.
dpa: Alfred Döblin wrote the novel 90 years ago. What can the book say to us today?
Qurbani: I think the book wants to tell us something about people. The book is interested in the people and how they move in this juggernaut city. And that always stays up-to-date. I think Berlin has not lost any of the qualities it had in the 1920s or 1930s. We tried to translate this as much as possible in our film.
dpa: Do you feel that Berlin is a juggernaut?
Qurbani: The Berlin I came to was an incredibly dangerous city because there are so many ways to distract yourself and lose yourself and entertain yourself. Every night I can go to an art show opening, a concert, a party, or a dinner with friends and completely forget what I really wanted to do. When I came to Berlin 14 years ago, a friend of mine always spoke of one word: wasteland.
dpa: What do you mean by that?
Qurbani: There were so many unbuilt spaces. And they represented the rooms you could get lost in. That’s changed in the meantime. Of course, Berlin is now being built up. And what I found over time – and that wasn’t easy – was a focus. I’d like to do my work and stay focused.
dpa: Not only the novel is very well known, but also the TV series by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. How much pressure does the existence such famous predecessors put on you?
Qurbani: A lot and then again very, very little. The pressure is there because the industry and some of the cultural scene start watching you closely as soon as you announce your plans. But there’s also total freedom because at some point you say to yourself, “I cannot live up to these expectations so I’ll just do what I think is right.” Of course it scares you. You can’t take it lightly, but I’m always pretty good at pushing it aside.
dpa: What material do you think is not filmed often enough?
Qurbani: I have the feeling that we’re getting more political. I think that’s great. I’m less interested in what we don’t do, but I have the feeling that there are subjects that will be exciting again. I mean, an examination of ourselves, our society, our politics. The places where our democratic, pluralistic society fails. We have been bringing up this painful subject for a while. But that’s just a theory.
dpa: It would at least seem appropriate to these times.
Qurbani: I work in the publicly funded cultural sector, and when I live from public funding, I feel obligated to do something that is relevant to society. We urgently need comedies and light films that deal with the microcosm of the self. But I think we also have to widen our sights sometimes and make films that are uncomfortable.
dpa: How did you research your film?
Qurbani: We spoke with members of NGOs, sought out interview partners, and sat down with refugees. That was important. It’s been awhile since my parents were refugees. But that’s something that is also part of my narrative: being foreign in a foreign country.
dpa: Did the history of your parents, who fled Afghanistan, play a major role in your home life?
Qurbani: How can it not play a role when – like my parents – you flee your home in your early twenties? Of course that saps you. Arrive here with two suitcases to start a completely new life, without speaking the language, without your family for support, without the security of the society and the culture that you know. I think it does something to people. And they naturally also pass that on to their children. The feeling of a certain ambiguity; that you have to prove yourself over and over again.
dpa: That’s understandable.
Qurbani: I admire my parents who, within a single generation – from arriving with two suitcases at Frankfurt Airport – managed to land in the middle class. Their children are all productive members of society. I think that’s an incredible achievement. And that speaks for two things: It speaks for my parents and their work ethic. But it also speaks for a country that gives you the opportunity to make it here. Even if I might never make it, then maybe my children’s generation will.
dpa: Do you have the impression you won’t make it?
Qurbani: I was an outsider in my Afghan community – my brother and I were too integrated into German culture for that. But at the same time we were too foreign-looking to be completely absorbed in the German community. You always stood with both feet on two different, shaky bits of ground.
dpa: And how does that enter in the film?
Qurbani: In the end, my film also has the idea of coming up in society. For me personally, this is still more a wish than a reality. Döblin wanted to remove his character Franz Biberkopf from the sub-proletariat and put him in the middle class at the end of the novel. When you ask what is left of the novel, that’s a key message for me, and that’s the story we tell. A person arrives as a stranger in a strange land. He is stripped of language, of security, of dignity. And via his own failures he somehow has to manage to find himself and make it here.
Burhan Qurbani (39) grew up in Cologne as a child of Afghan refugees. He took part in the Berlinale competition as early as 2010 with his film thesis “Shahada” and later made the celebrated black and white film "We are Young. We are Strong" about the 1992 anti-immigrant riots in East Germany. “Berlin Alexanderplatz” premiered in the Berlinale 2020 Competition, won five German Film Awards and the Rotterdam International Film Festival Eurimages Award.
article c dpa with permission
image courtesy Berlinale: Joachim Krol, Albrecht Schuch, Burhan Qurbani, Yella Haase, Welket Bungue, Berlinale 2020
