TRAILERS

First Trailer for German Comedy 'Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush'

by Alex Billington
February 22, 2022
Source: YouTube

"Do you think Murat is guilty?" The Match Factory has debuted the promo trailer for the German political comedy Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush, which premiered at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival earlier this month. It won two awards: Best Screenplay and Best Lead Performance for actress / comedian Meltem Kaptan. Desperate to help her son, Rabiye Kurnaz, a housewife and loving mother from Bremen, goes to the police, notifies authorities and almost despairs at their impotence and in the end, against all the odds, something truly remarkable happens. She learns her son has been sent to Guantanamo, and spends years fighting to free him, taking her all the way to the Supreme Court in the US. Kaptan stars as Rabiye Kurnaz, joined by Alexander Scheer, Charly Hübner, Nazmi Kirik, Sevda Polat, Abdullah Emre Öztürk, and Safak Sengül. This is one of the only good films from the Berlin Film Festival this year (my review here) and I hope it finds an audience outside of Germany as it's both an important and uplifting story to tell.

First promo trailer (+ poster) for Andreas Dresen's Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush, from YouTube:

From Berlinale: "Rabiye Kurnaz is someone you might generally call an ordinary woman, except that she is a real dynamo. Taking care of her children and much more, she is the one running the show in her terraced house in Bremen. Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, her son Murat is accused of terrorism and is (one of the first) shipped off to Guantanamo prison camp. This marks the beginning of a journey into the heart of world politics for this resolute German-Turkish woman. With human rights lawyer Bernhard Docke, whom she soon has completely on her side (like almost everyone around her), she battles for the release of her son – using her very own brand of self-taught English – all the way to the Supreme Court…" Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush, also known as Rabiye Kurnaz gegen George W. Bush in German, is directed by German filmmaker Andreas Dresen, of the films Silent Country, Night Shapes, Grill Point, Willenbrock, Summer in Berlin, Cloud 9, Whiskey with Vodka, Stopped on Track, As We Were Dreaming, The Legend of Timm Thaler, and Gundermann previously. The screenplay is written by Laila Stieler. This just premiered at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival this month (read our review). No release dates have been set yet - stay tuned.

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