London-based documentary specialists Taskovski Films has picked up German feature documentary Love, Deutschmarks And Death, which is screening in Berlin Panorama this week.
Taskovski has taken worldwide sales and distribution rights, except Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland for the film. Rapid Eye Movies holds the German rights and will release the film in Germany later this year.
Directed by Cem Kaya, the film uncovers a forgotten subculture – that of the music made by the Turkish “guest workers” who came to Germany from the early 1960s onwards. Often suffering from homesickness, stuck in dead-end jobs, treated badly by their hosts, they nonetheless created their own utterly distinctive musical culture working in everything from pop to hip-hop.
The documentary doesn’t only celebrate the Turkish workers’ music but it also looks at the origins and the history of western policies towards the immigrants and the roots of rising nationalism across Europe. Kaya wrote the script together with Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay.
Love, Deutschmarks And Death was made through Cologne-based Filmfaust and Berlin-based Film Five. The producers are Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay, Stefan Kauertz, Claus Reichel and Florian Schewe. The film received backing from public TV broadcasters WDR/RBB in cooperation with Arte, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), the Federal Film Board (FFA) and the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF).
The doc joins a busy Taskovski EFM slate which also includes Miguel Angel Blanca’s Magaluf Ghost Town and Firouzeh Khosrovani’s Radiograph Of A Family.
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