SYNOPSIS
Three teenage girls from Vienna twerk in hijab and sing a pop song. A YouTube video of it makes them famous overnight, especially among Kurdish Muslims. Yesmin, the only one of the friends who is Kurdish herself, begins to distance herself more and more from her culture. Nati and Bella, on the other hand, seem fascinated by a world that is strange to them. When the girls meet two young Kurdish patriots, the situation threatens to escalate. A film about young people caught between social media and self-discovery, a story of rebellious young women.
Awards
GWFF Best First Feature Award | Berlinale, Germany, 2022
CAST & CREW
Kurdwin Ayub
Director
Producer(s)
Ulrich Seidl
Script
Kurdwin Ayub
Director of Photography
Enzo Brandner
Production designer
Julia Libiseller
Sound
David Almeida-Ribeiro
Edit
Roland Stöttingaer
Cast
Melina Benli, Law Wallner, Maya Wopienka
Production company(ies)
Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion GmbH
Kurdwin Ayub
Born 1990. Born in Iraq, she lives and works as a director and screenwriter in Vienna. From 2008 to 2013, she studied painting and experimental animation film at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. At the same time, she studied Performing Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 2011 and 2012, Kurdwin Ayub won the MehrWERT Short Film Prize at the Viennale and in 2013 the Vienna Independent Shorts Newcomer Film Prize. Her works were shown in 2016 in a special short film programme at the Festival for International Independent Cinema in Buenos Aires (BAFICI), at the Seville European FF (2016) and at the Viennale (2012). For her first feature-length film, the documentary Paradise! Paradise! Ayub was a director, author and cinematographer. The film won the Prize for the Best Cinematography at the 2016 Diagonale, the New Waves Non-Fiction Award at the 2016 Seville European FF and the Carte Blanche Newcomers Award at the Duisburg Film Week in 2016. In 2019, Ayub won the Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the Max Ophüls FF with her film Boomerang.
Filmography
Sexy (short, 2013), Paradise! Paradise! (doc., 2016), Boomerang (short, 2018), Sonne (2022).
