Hussi Kutlucan: Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh

Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh, Hussi Kutlucan, 93‘, Germany, ZDF 27.7.1999, Original German version

Hussi Kutlucan is a well-known actor from the Federal Republic. For Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, he went behind the camera to become an important filmmaker of early German-Turkish cinema. In the mid-1990s, influenced by racist attacks and the state’s treatment of asylum seekers, he decided to make a comedy inspired by Italian neorealism. And so he sends Dudie, an undocumented immigrant, from a container ship in Hamburg to the construction sites around Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. In the hope of obtaining legal residency, he agrees to a paid marriage, but his wife dies and Dudie is deported together with her (German) son. “With an unusual script, the author has pulled off a balancing act,” writes the editor. “He has tackled a sensitive issue without false consternation or social romanticism.”

Hussi Kutlucan (*1962) is a German-Turkish filmmaker and actor. After initially working as a theatre and film actor, he began making his own feature films in 1991, alongside a successful acting career, for which he received, among others, the Adolf Grimme Award. His debut film Sommer in Mezra (1991) was made in cooperation with Das kleine Fernsehspiel, as well as Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh (1999) and Drei gegen Troja (2005).