German shows horror of serial killer
Filmmaker Fatih Akin defends flick after # MeToo criticism
Berlin: One of Germany’s most acclaimed directors, Fatih Akin, hit back Saturday at criticism of his new film about a reallife serial killer, The Golden Glove, charging that it exploits the female victims.
Akin, who won a Golden Globe award last year for his terrorism drama In the Fade starring Diane Kruger, insisted the ultraviolent new picture aimed to grant “dignity” to both the killer and the slain women.
“We are living in a time in which the discussion about sexual violence is everywhere and that is justified,” Akin told reporters at the Berlin film festival, where the picture premiered. “But when you make a film about sexual violence, you have to show it,” he said after facing several pointed questions.
Akin said he had no desire to “glorify” violence against women with the film’s scenes graphically depicting sexual torture, murder and dismemberment which many viewers said left them feeling queasy.
He said he had shown the film to pimps he knew from his hometown Hamburg’s red- light district, where the movie is set. “You can talk to them until you’re blue in the face about how wrong violence against women is and # MeToo and it goes in one ear and out the other,” Akin said.
“But if people who have committed violence against women say ‘( this movie’s) too brutal for me’, then maybe it’s naive but I’m hopeful that the film will have an impact on them.” Akin said for all the heightened sensitivity around sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry, it should not be used to stifle artistic freedom.
“Of course you think about # MeToo stuff and I support it,” he said. “But it should not... Create censorship.” Akin, who has billed the film a “horror movie”, based it on author Heinz Strunk’s novel of the same title, named for the seedy pub where the real killer Fritz Honka met his victims. Most were alcoholics who went home with men in exchange for liquor.