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Filmmakers, some from Germany's minority
communities, expressed their shock over the attacks at the
Berlinale, seen as the most political of the major film
festivals and traditional champion of arthouse movies and
progressive causes.
The attacker, who shot dead people in shisha bars in the central
German town of Hanau late on Wednesday before killing his mother
and himself, published a manifesto online strewn with conspiracy
theories and racist views, prosecutors said.
The attack, at least five of whose victims were Turkish
nationals, followed another by a far-right gunman on an eastern
city's synagogue, when two people were killed.
Burhan Qurbani, director of "Berlin Alexanderplatz", a retelling
of a German novel of social exclusion from the 1920s that
premieres on Wednesday, talked in an interview of his fear that
such attacks could become 'normal'.
Born in Germany to Afghan refugees, Qurbani retells Alexander
Doeblin's novel with an African refugee as the central character
instead of the novel's freshly released, disoriented prisoner.
"Yesterday there was a massacre," said Qurbani, who has close
family ties to Hanau. "It's not normal in Germany, and I hope
it's not going to become normal. Our history should teach us
that we can't allow nationalist, racist and xenophobic elements
to define our image."
Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision in 2015 to allow in over a
million refugees, mainly people displaced by Syria's civil war,
transformed German politics, fueled the rise of a far-right
party and prompted soul-searching over whether the country could
live up its commitments to asylum and human rights.
"As a refugee you not only lose your home, you are leaving your
language, your confidence, your family, the feeling of being
secure: that is human dignity to me," Qurbani said, reflecting
the views of the many people who had lauded Merkel's decision.
Melika Foroutan, Iranian-German star of "Pari", which premiers
on Tuesday and tells the story of an Iranian mother seeking her
vanished migrant son on the teeming streets of Athens, urged
more social engagement from her compatriots.
"Today is not a good day," she said in an interview. "I have a
nephew who also goes to shisha bars. It could have been him... I
take this attack personally, and I think all democrats in
Germany should take this attack personally."
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt, Tara Oakes and Lena Toepler;
Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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