Berlin Alexanderplatz

Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel had been filmed twice before Burhan Qurbani took it on: by Phil Jutzi in 1931, and by Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a fifteen-hour television series in 1980. Qurbani, born in Germany to Afghan refugee parents, had already brought Shahada to the Berlinale competition in 2010 and revisited the 1992 Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots in We Are Young. We Are Strong. His Berlin Alexanderplatz returned him to the Golden Bear competition in February 2020.

The update is radical but faithful in structure. Döblin's ex-convict Franz Biberkopf becomes Francis, an undocumented migrant from Guinea-Bissau who has promised himself he will be good, and the novel's Weimar underworld becomes the drug trade around Hasenheide park. Welket Bungué carries the film with a watchful, physical performance; Albrecht Schuch's Reinhold, needy and insinuating, is the role most critics singled out, with Jella Haase and Joachim Król in support. Told in five chapters across 183 minutes, it is shot by Yoshi Heimrath in saturated neon and night-blue, with a pulsing score by Dascha Dauenhauer.

Reviews were divided. Some found the ambition and the length hard to sustain, while others admired the scale and conviction of a German epic about who gets to belong in the country. The German Film Academy came down firmly on the side of the admirers: the film won five Lolas in 2020, including the Silver Lola for Best Film and Best Supporting Actor for Schuch, who won Best Actor the same night for System Crasher.