East and west clash in Rheingold, the latest feature from Fatih Akin, which takes him back to the streets of urban Germany after 2019’s controversial serial-killer drama The Golden Glove.
This too, though, is a biopic of sorts, with a similarly notorious subject matter: Kurdish rapper, record label boss and sometime jailbird Giwar Hajabi, AKA Xatar.
Born in a bat-infested cave under heavy bombing during the Iran-Iraq war, Hajabi — still only 40 — has had an interesting life, to put it mildly.
One suspects this often warts-and-all portrait is simply the tip of a very dark iceberg (the eye-popping extent of Hajabi’s drug-dealing career is only glimpsed in a brief montage), but a charismatic, even vulnerable performance by star Emilio Sakraya is enough to keep us onside.
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