Berlin Alexanderplatz

In a spectacular return to Alfred Döblin’s legendary novel and simultaneously opening a bold dialogue with the 1980 series Berlin Alexanderplatz directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Qurbani moves the story from the interwar period to modern times and replaces the Döblinian proletarian with Francis, a West African illegal immigrant. Francis has a dark past behind him and, after reaching Germany, wants to start an honest life. But for a newcomer without papers there is only a bed in a miserable hostel, poorly paid under-the-table work and repeated humiliations… unless, that is, he succumbs to Reinhold's whimsical charm and immerses himself in the cocaine and flowing champagne of Berlin's sequin-neon underworld. Qurbani's film is a crime-story ballad about a tortured soul stuck in unlawful limbo, a nocturnal urban odyssey and a full-blown melodrama. All the while a passionate bond binds Francis to the innocent child prostitute Eva as well as to Reinhold, who becomes a brother, a guide leading him astray into the wasteland, personifying the devil himself. Although the director is definitely attracted by the mythical character from Döblin's novel, he also gently outlines the story's social dimension of the immigrant - invisible, functioning on the margins of the city, diligently sketching out its alternative outskirts.