She won the most important acting prize at the Berlinale – now there’s obviously a lot going on in Meltem Kaptan’s life.
“It’s still a “crazy” feeling,” she told the “Berliner Morgenpost” (Sunday). “The little bear has already found its place next to the 1970s retro lamp. It looks at me every evening. And since then so much has happened! There’s a lot of mail coming from all sorts of countries, even Hollywood.”
In the new film by director Andreas Dresen (“Gundermann”) she can be seen in the leading role. Kaptan plays the mother of former Guantanamo prisoner Murat Kurnaz. The film tells how she tries to free her son from the US prison camp. “Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush” will be in cinemas at the end of April.
You had just been to the Istanbul Film Festival, where the film was even the opening film. “It’s nice to see that the film is also working elsewhere,” said Kaptan, who has appeared in Germany primarily as a comedienne (“Ladies Night”). She loves entertainment, but also has other facets. “They fell short. And I’m glad that I can show them now.” There are now many inquiries and she reads many scripts.
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As a comedienne, she also addressed integration debates and experiences with post-migrant identity – isn’t her new film so far removed from her comedy after all? “I see myself as a modern, enlightened German woman with a Turkish migration background and that’s how I look at the world,” said Kaptan.
But it is important for her that she has the freedom to decide for herself what she talks about. “I am also moved by other things in society. But there are always moments when the ethno backpack I carry with me gives me a hard time,” she said in the interview. “It was only a shame when people expected me to be Turkish on stage. That used to happen often. I had to fight hard to get out of there.”
