Cem Kaya / Germany / 2022 / 98’ / German, Turkish | Italian Subtitles

Love deutschmarks and death vividly and rhythmically tells the story of the independent and largely unknown music of immigrants from Turkey and their children and grandchildren in Germany. In the form of a documentary essay, director Cem Kaya takes viewers into a sparkling universe of musical diversity. Through a cinematic experience of the highest sound quality, it brings to life the energy and spirit of those years. For example, live performances by the folkloric duo Derdiyoklar during a wedding with thousands of guests in a multipurpose hall turned festival hall somewhere in the Ruhr region: melancholy, but danceable, political, but cheerful, tearful, but sincere.

Cem Kaya

Cem Kaya was born in 1976 in Schweinfurt. After studying communication design at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart, he initially worked as a producer, editor and director of commercials and music videos. His first two feature-length documentaries were Arabeks and Remake, Remix, Rip-Off, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in 2014 and was an outstanding success on the international film festival circuit. His current film Liebe, D-Mark und Tod analyzes the musical culture of Turkish immigrants in Germany. The film had its world premiere at the 2022 Berlinale, where it won the Panorama Audience Award.
Kaya uses a great deal of archival material from a wide range of sources in his films. This colorful mix of materials, combined with his own observations, is the main ingredient in his extremely insightful and intelligent documentaries. Kaya also works as a cinematographer. In 2017 he shot the investigative film 77sqm_9:26min by the London-based group Forensic Architecture, which reconstructs the NSU killing of Halit Yozgat. The film premiered at Documenta 14 that year.