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Invitational screening:
Monday – August 9 – 7:00 pm
Varsity Cinemas – 55 Bloor St. West – Toronto
RSVP to
starpr@sympatico.ca
DVD screeners are also available for review purposes.
Fatih Akin’s Soul Kitchen – which won both the Special
Jury Prize and the Young Cinema Award at the 2009 Venice Film
Festival – tells the story of a restaurant owner who strives to
keep his business, despite a series of mishaps. Unlike Akin’s
previous Head-On and The Edge of
Heaven, this film takes on a humorous bent, including a
scene that results in an orgy after the chef overdoses the
dessert with an aphrodisiac.
The story is set in Wilhelmsburg, a working-class neighborhood
in Hamburg that is becoming gentrified. Young Greek-German Zinos
(Adam Bousdoukos) owns the Soul Kitchen restaurant that has
always attracted a locals-only crowd who love schnitzels and
beer. But lately Zinos has been down on his luck. He’s hurt his
back, his girlfriend has moved to Shanghai, and customers are
boycotting his new gourmet chef.
Things start looking up when a hip crowd embraces his revamped
culinary concept, but that still doesn’t mend Zino’s broken
heart. He decides to fly to China, leaving the restaurant in the
hands of his ex-con brother. Yet nothing turns out the way he
expects.
Along with Bousdoukos (Head-On,
Short Sharp Shock), there
are many actors from Akin’s films, including Moritz Bleibtreu (Solino, In July)
as Zinos’s brother, Birol Ünel (Head-On,
In July) as the
new chef, and Demir Gökgöl (Head-On)
as Zino’s cantankerous tenant. Three dynamic women also star –
Pheline Roggan as Zinos’s girlfriend, Dorka Gryllus as his
physiotherapist, and Anna Bederke as his waitress.
The film is reminiscent of a “Heimatfilm” (i.e. homeland film),
a typical German genre made popular in the 1950s. It’s about
friendship, love and a village-like community – i.e. the Soul
Kitchen restaurant. Whether you are a Greek-German like Zinos,
or a Turkish-German like Fatih Akin, home is where you feel
comfortable.
As for music, there’s soul (from funky
instrumentals with Kool & The Gang to classical R&B tracks by
Sam Cooke), Hamburg hip hop and electro sounds, live rock music,
Greek rembetiko, and a de rigueur DJ-set. And what’s a “heimatfilm” without a song by
Hans Albers, one of the top German actor-singers in the ’30s and
’40s?
The film is directed by Fatih Akin, who also co-wrote the script
with Adam Bousdoukos. It is in German and some Greek with
English subtitles.
Soul Kitchen is being released in Canada by Mongrel
Media.
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