“Toni Hamady” is written in capital letters above the men’s salon. The man who became famous as Toni Hamady, TV clan leader in Berlin-Neukölln, is leaning in the open front door. Kida Ramadan smokes a cigarette. The shop and its shop windows are plastered with posters, not the usual ultra-cool hairstyles, but posters from his films and series: “4 Blocks”, “Man from Beirut”, “No Orange Tree Grows in Berlin”, all Kida works.
There are two garden chairs and a small table in front of the shop window in case customers have to wait. Now they are occupied by actor Burak Yigit and Firat, Ramadan’s assistant. It’s ten o’clock on Saturday morning. Not much going on in Kreuzberg, in the Wrangelkiez. Ramadan, who has made 100 films in 20 years, could take it easy. But something is bothering him. He came across a video that is on the social media channels of AfD Saxony.
What the man in the video says is this: “It has to end… I wish they would close the borders again… And I say that as a migrant.” The man bears only a distant resemblance to Ramadan, the beard bears that wrong color, the accent is wrong. But the AfD comments with the sentence: “As a celebrity with a migration background, the actor Kida Khodr Ramadan, who comes from Lebanon, says what many Germans are now thinking.”
Ramadan with actor Burak Yigit
Those: Mirza Odabasi
That doesn’t leave Ramadan alone: ”I have to make a video about it.” He grabs the photographer who has come along, leads the way into the back room of his barber shop, stands in front of a white wall: “I have to make a statement there, I beg you, that to share.” Puts a cigarette in his mouth, lights it, explains the situation. Ends with: “Fuck racism. Fuck Nazis. dirt party. bastard party. We are currently taking legal action against it. We’ll dribble them away. Your kida.”
So, that’s gone from the soul. “Now we’re going to have breakfast.” Yigit suggests a new restaurant, the “Good Morning, Monday”, which Ramadan doesn’t know yet. Just around the corner into Falckensteinstraße, which leads to Görlitzer Park, where you can get a gram of cocaine for 15 euros, which is then boiled down to crack in the adjacent streets. “We also did a lot of shit here 20 years ago, but stayed away from drugs,” says Yigit, who currently has a role for Netflix. “What kind?” – “A dealer, what do you think?”
At best, Ramadan has a rudimentary understanding of the New Year’s riot. “Yes, people haven’t been able to let off steam for two years. But it’s rude to attack people who just want to help. It is unacceptable that firefighters and Red Cross workers have to go to a Späti during their deployment.” And adds: “However, it is also wrong to only accuse migrants, according to the police, the majority of the perpetrators were probably German.”
The “Monday” looks cosy, with a motley mix of wood and upholstered furniture, but there is no empty table for five. So command back to Wrangelstraße, there is the “Sumak”, named after a doner kebab spice, Ramadan knows that, and the restaurant knows it. On the way he gossips about the purely English menus that are spreading like a plague in the Kreuzberg restaurants. And about oat milk: “You have to say it explicitly now if you want normal milk.”
There is space in the “sumak”. Ramadan orders a mixed breakfast platter for everyone and a pan of scrambled eggs and beef ham for himself. There is no need to talk about oat milk here. A young couple of tourists stop at the table. “Her face looks so familiar to us,” the girl says to Ramadan. “I used to play football,” he replies without batting an eyelid. “Would you…” she asks shyly, and Ramadan says “Of course!” and stands up. A selfie is created. The couple thanks you. It will certainly identify its catch before it returns to its Bavarian homeland.
It wasn’t by accident that he thought of football. He’s just directed a series, his first, called “Asbestos,” and it could be characterized as “4 Blocks of Soccer.” You can see Ramadan suffers when everyone immediately pulls out the “blocks” comparison, but he has to go through with it. Another Middle Eastern clan in Berlin, drugs again, but this time a young football talent who is framed by the family for a robbery and is under pressure in prison to also pursue a criminal career. The dialogues: authentic to the limit of what is reasonable for ARD.
An incredible cast
The series has an unbelievable cast: Lulu Hacke (daughter of the bassist of Einsturzenden Neubauten and Meret Becker), Jasmin Tabatabai, Nicolette Krebitz, Claudia Michelsen, David Kross, Ludwig Trepte, Detlev Buck, Frederick Lau, Hubert Koundé (main character alongside Vincent Cassel in the legendary “Hass”), Anatole Taubmann, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Stipe Erceg, Sabin Tambrea, Alexander Beyer. The young footballer is played by the German rapper Xider, his first film role, a Ramadan revelation. “Xider” and “Kida” have the same root.
What’s incredible about it isn’t just the names, but how they came together. “Everyone called themselves, everyone convinced themselves,” says Ramadan. It sounds like pride. He came to Germany as a refugee before the Lebanese civil war, lived in a home for asylum seekers in Kreuzberg, left secondary school without a degree and breakdanced for tourists on the Ku’damm – he calls, and now everyone comes. It was a long way – “I’ve already washed dishes in a few bars here in the neighborhood” – but today he is a hinge between potatoes and Kanaken (“You can call me that”), between the young bio-German film scene and the young migrant one . He would also like to have the director Philipp Kadelbach (“Parfum”) in the Kida Pack, for whom he has great respect. This creates an informal meeting and working space across origins that has not existed before. His center isn’t old enough yet, just in his mid-40s, but one day they will call him “Godfather”.
Ramadan im “Sumac”
Those: Mirza Odabasi
As soon as Ramadan emerges from the “Sumak”, the next selfie request is made. If he were out and about all day, he would probably have to pose a hundred times, Ramadan estimates, perhaps not that much of an exaggeration. He willingly stands up, puts his arm on his fans’ shoulders. Kida Ramadan is not only proud of what has been achieved, he also thanks generously: to the director Neco Çelik, who discovered him, to his agent Katrin Wans, to the producer Anke Greifeneder, who entrusted Toni Hamady to him, to the ARD editor Carolin Haasis, who made “asbestos” possible for him.
The producer Quirin Berg once washed his head that he had to stop behaving like an asshole. For a while, Ramadan had a reputation for being difficult to eat baklava with. After “4 Blocks” (2017-2019) he took off, thinking he was the greatest. In the meantime he has solid ground under his feet again, develops film projects, has directed four feature films and this series, wants to work less in front of the camera than behind it.
Ramadan is still rooted in Kreuzberg. We meet a man, shabby jeans, a ten-day beard, he is said to be known in the neighborhood for asking for the bottles in front of supermarkets that customers are currently carrying to return. Ramadan offers him a chair and talks to him in a friendly way in Turkish. After ten minutes he shuffles on. He has a permanent place to stay, says Ramadan, but is probably at odds with his wife. One day he argued with someone on the sidewalk, after which this man approached him and politely offered to take the opponent around the corner. He politely declined the offer. But he slips the “Bulgarian murderer,” as he calls him, ten euros every week.
A meeting with the “Bulgarian killer”
In the “Passenger Espresso” in the Oppelner, Ramadan knows, there is good coffee. He orders some (“with real milk!”), sits down outside because he wants to smoke. Part of “not losing the neighborhood” is that he continues to work with young filmmakers. “Es brennt”, the debut of the German-Turkish Erol Afsin about a xenophobic act in Dresden, has just been finished. Was submitted to the Berlinale, which rejected it.
That bothers him. It says Kida ante Portas! “I love the Berlinale. For me, it’s the most important festival in the world because I’m from Berlin.” For many migrants, the festival is an important stage on their way to respect in the majority of society, including him. In just ten percent of his 100 films, his name is Dieter or Anselm or Dr. Stein, there are still many Murats and Maliks and Nabils among them. “Do you want to see ‘It’s Burning’?” Before he disappears into the family weekend, Ramadan pulls out his cell phone, calls the director, and a viewing is arranged. Let’s see what the Berlinale didn’t want.