"Aprilkinder“ - Eröffnungsabend der 9. Kurdischen Filmtage Leipzig

In the organizer's words:

Formerly fleeing violence and poverty in Turkey, the life of a German-Kurdish family in Hamburg at the end of the 1990s is full of ambivalences. For the parents, it means isolation, speechlessness and fears in addition to relative safety, but for their children Cem, Mehmet and Dilan, it also means the chance for personal freedom and development in addition to all the capitalist exploitation, racist stigmatization and criminality. When Cem meets sex worker Kim in a nightclub and the two fall in love, not only are the family's cultural expectations torpedoed, but the place assigned to Cem by mainstream society is also shaken.
At a time when multiplex love stories such as "Armageddon" and "Titanic" dominated German cinemas and the Nazi violence of the 90s was heroized and outsourced in "American History X", this stirringly acted and subtly nuanced, post-migrant social portrait was largely lost. In the year 2025, when isolation and racism have been declared the leading German culture, this film, freshly digitized, is getting a little more visibility again at the right time. The documentary-like drama by Yüksel Yavuz won the Max Ophüls Audience Award in 1999. (Yavuz, DE 1998 - FSK 12 - OdmU)

Followed by a panel discussion between director Yüksel Yavuz & Dr. Özgür Çiçek (University of Amsterdam).

More information: https://www.zeroone.de/movies/aprilkinder/

Trailer: https://www.filmportal.de/video/aprilkinder-1998

We will show the film in the original languages Kurmancî, Turkish & German with German subtitles.

Price information:

4 Euro = no coal ticket 7 Euro = normal price, financing for "no coal" ticket