Et is the stuff dreams are made of: your first film, the leading role right away – and everyone is blown away by you. Meltem Kaptan plays the title role in Andreas Dresen’s Berlinale film “Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush” (she is Rabiye, not George W.), the mother of Murat Kurnaz from Bremen, who was innocently imprisoned at Guantánamo, who – a true story – on goes on a crusade against the whole world to free her son.
Dresen and his author Laila Stieler turned it into a fantastic comedy, a dramatic comedy that constantly walks the fine line between the deadly seriousness of the world historical event of 9/11 and the comedy of a mother for whom there is one event above all: the disappearance of her son. Keeping her balance is a burden that falls on the shoulders of 41-year-old Meltem Kaptan. She studied acting in America and has been on musical stages there, but in Germany she is only known as a stand-up comedian and presenter of the WDR television cabaret “Ladies Night”.
Together with Alexander Scheer as a sober Hanseatic lawyer, Kaptan forms a hilarious and deadly serious pair of opposites who simply refuse to submit to the rationale of world politics. A conversation with Meltem Kaptan about underestimated motherliness, her hometown of Harsewinkel and the longing for seriousness.
WORLD: Where is Harsewinkel?
Meltem Captain: In deep East Westphalia. My parents once came from a very small town on the Black Sea to this very small town in East Westphalia because they were looking for a Turkish teacher there. In Harsewinkel there are more combine harvesters and cows than people. The combine harvester company Claas stands for Harsewinkel.
WORLD: How do you become funny in East Westphalia?
Captain: Oliver Welke also grew up in Harsewinkel. When you’re a Turkish woman in a very small place, and when you’re a rather strong woman, you kind of get funny.
WORLD: And it’s easier to accept at school if you’re weird.
Captain: I was never the class clown, but the social type who likes to make people laugh. I didn’t originally want to be a comedian, I was interested in journalism. I then applied to a station as a comedy writer and speaker, was accepted – and at some point you realize you’ve landed completely on the comedy track.
WORLD: And now suddenly on a completely different one: the mother of an alleged terrorist. Rabiye Kurnaz, the woman you play, was never very interested in politics. And you? How did you experience 9/11?
Captain: At that time I was living in a dormitory in Marburg, with students from all over the world. On this day we organized an international evening where everyone cooked something from their homeland. There was a huge living room with a kitchen – and a very small television. I remember someone yelling that we should turn this on. I will never forget the moment because one of my best friends actually had an aunt who worked at the World Trade Center. Luckily she survived. Everyone felt that a turning point was happening. Pretty soon it occurred to me that peaceful Islam would also be viewed differently.
Lawyer Bernhard Docke (Alexander Scheer) and Rabiye Kurnaz (Meltem Kaptan)
Source: Pandora Film / Andreas Höfer
WORLD: Did you feel that yourself?
Captain: When I had to tick which faith I belong to at university in America, I almost panicked. I had heard the – true – story that if you didn’t show up at uni for a few days, a task force would come and break down your door to see if you were making a bomb. At the airport, I was searched almost down to my underpants, allegedly pulled out at random. I lived with pastors’ daughters who got scared because they had taken in a Turkish woman. I had to calm them down first. You felt that, at small and big events, openly and hidden, it was just there.
WORLD: I just remembered a gag, maybe it’s really bad. “Question: What is the positive thing about Corona? Answer: Then the Germans are more afraid of Corona than of terrorism.” Would you recite such a gag?
Captain: Pretty good for a cynical gag (laughs). Humans are programmed in such a way that they like to worry about something.
WORLD: How does Andreas Dresen from the East come up with a West comedian for this role?
Captain: By Karin Wendland, the caster. I devoured the screenplay, it touched me, and you could tell it was written by a woman. What I found great was this strong Turkish female character and the fact that it is a tragic subject that also contains hope. And the screenwriter Laila Stieler, who is not Turkish, captured the inner workings of this Turkish family so well.
WORLD: Laila Stieler is not called Laila for nothing, her biological father is Lebanese.
Captain: Turkish families speak differently again. The way Rabiye speaks to her children. These nicknames like “my sheep” are exactly what my mother uses. The neologism that Stieler puts in Rabiye’s mouth: “waitress-style”. They seem funny from a German point of view, but that’s what happens when two cultures meet. And that you start a sentence in German and end it in Turkish. Or that a Turkish word suddenly got lost in a German sentence.
WORLD: Rabiye speaks an idiosyncratic German. Why?
Captain: Because the original Rabiye speaks the same way. When developing the role, I went completely beyond the voice. She was a guest at Beckmann’s, and I watched these excerpts again and again to pick up sound and rhythm and style. Her energetic nature is also in her voice. And she has no dialect that can be assigned. There’s something of the Black Sea in it, like my family, and there’s even a Bulgarian touch.
WORLD: The film Rabiye has a motherly nature all of her own. Like an Italian mom or a Jewish mom.
Captain: She is a mother through and through. I have no children, but I have such a super mom. I was fascinated by how someone completely immersed themselves in this role. Today Rabiye’s children are all out of the house, but if you call her on the phone, they’ll be the talk of the town. She is busy 24 hours a day doing something good for her children. That is the motor why she took all this upon herself, the high power of motherhood. And then there is her sense of humour. When I first met her, she was just telling her lawyer a joke. And I thought: The woman can laugh very loudly. Good.
“Turkish families talk differently again”
What: Pandora Movie
WORLD: At one point she says in the film that her husband was never as important to her as her children. And when her son finally wants to look at the starry sky alone, she says immediately: “I’ll come with you!”
Captain: That’s the motherly thing, and she’s crossing a line there. I have such women in my circle of friends. They say: “Oh, my husband is quite nice, but the children come first”.
WORLD: Overmothering is no longer popular these days. Women should focus more on their careers.
Captain: We underestimate mothers and what they achieve. The women who do not juggle work and motherhood, but want to concentrate entirely on their children, are almost smiled at. That’s a pity, because you can do that with all your heart, too. You should do what is best in your heart. The other side of the coin, which I also get, is: “Why, you don’t have any children!? You as a Turkish woman? You are a warm person! You would be such a great mother!” It is easy to judge.
WORLD: The Rabiye role must have come like a bolt from the blue for you two years ago. They had probably already booked live performances.
Captain: I don’t know why, but: I’ve felt like I should do more TV for a while. As if I had had an inner inspiration. Nevertheless, I had started to write a new solo program. And then came the pandemic and came Rabiye.
WORLD: How important were stage performances for you?
Captain: Four or five years ago I lived almost exclusively from the live business, then shifted more to television.
WORLD: Is your acting career going on now?
Captain: There was always a desire to go back to the finer tones I played earlier in my career. The comedy I do has become more serious and socially critical. Maybe both can be combined.
WORLD: As comedians get older, they seem to yearn for seriousness, like Robin Williams and Heinz Rühmann.
Captain: The word “longing” is very apt. The longing was there, and it grew stronger and stronger. Go deeper, express yourself differently. Fool around quietly, but also touch people. You should be able to do this balancing act.