From car dealer to up-and-coming director

What a flight to Bangkok can be good for: Ali Hakim's feature film debut "Bonnie & Bonnie" opens in German cinemas on 24 October. He wrote the synopsis while on holiday. The story about two teenage girls who love each other, steal money from a bar and then go on the run in a stolen car had of course been in his head for some time, but he put it down on paper for the first time on the plane. And then everything happened very quickly: "When I got back, I finalised the script and sent it to NDR - a few days later I got the call that they liked the synopsis. I then worked on the real script together with Script Writer Maike Rasch," says Hakim. He shot his feature film debut in Wilhelmsburg and the surrounding area over around 20 days in September 2018, and "Bonnie & Bonnie" celebrated its premiere at Filmfest Hamburg in September 2019.

In 1989, the then four-year-old fled to Germany from Afghanistan with his family. The family was first accommodated in a refugee centre in Rendsburg, before moving on to Hamburg Wilhelmsburg in 1994, where Hakim still lives today. The now 34-year-old can no longer remember the escape, but his country of birth still plays a major role in his films: "Actually, every one of my films except Bonnie & Bonnie has a reference to Afghanistan. I even shot the short film "Taweez" there in 2014 - it was the most strenuous shoot I've ever had," says the Hamburg-based filmmaker. And one of his latest projects called "Mantu" is about an Afghan car dealer who is supposed to save the last German snack bar in Hamburg's Billstraße from bankruptcy. As is so often the case, Hakim draws inspiration from his experiences in recent years. During his studies at the Media Academy in Hamburg, the filmmaker worked as a used car dealer to keep his head above water. An experience that is now benefiting him: "It's a completely different world with different rules and laws - I'm now putting that into my new film," Hakim reveals.

He got the idea for "Bonnie and Bonnie" from a couple of teenagers from his neighbourhood who had robbed petrol stations and casinos several times. And since he is a big fan of love stories, he simply brought the two together and knitted a "Bonnie and Clyde" story, with one small difference: "I wanted my film to focus more on the women's perspective without the film revolving too much around the topic of homosexuality. In the film, my two protagonists never think about why they became lesbians," says Hakim. The two leading actresses Emma Drogunova and Sarah Mahita were a real stroke of luck. Hakim's story was actually supposed to be set in a Palestinian milieu, but the casting threw all plans overboard. Emma convinced the Directors so much that he rewrote the script together with his screenwriting partner Maike Rasch and turned the Palestinian family into an Albanian one. Why did he do that? "Emma just didn't look the least bit Palestinian," says Hakim.

The filming itself went very smoothly, with all the locations being close together so as not to push up the budget unnecessarily. And without knowing it, the film team had actually chosen an Albanian neighbourhood in Wilhelmsburg for a large part of their filming. Financial support was provided by the Nordlichter programme, an initiative for young talent by NDR, Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein and nordmedia. The drama was produced by the Hamburg-based company Riva Film.

But the life of a filmmaker is of course not just about filming: If you want to meet Ali Hakim away from his film projects, you have a good chance in the evening at "Clockers" in Paul Roosen Straße or at "Standard". "There are a lot of regulars here and it's not yet so touristy," says the filmmaker and cocktail lover. During the day, he likes to sit in one of the cafés in Karolinenstraße or, of course, in his office in Rothenburgsort.

Has he always wanted to make films? Not necessarily. "For me, there are two things in life that shape society: science and art. As a teenager, I always wanted to be an astrophysicist, but I was also interested in the visual arts. So I was a bit ambivalent," says Hakim. The decision was then made in 11th grade philosophy class when his teacher managed to get him interested in old film classics such as Citizen Kane. This was followed by a final exam on "The Matrix" and the certainty that he would go into film. Numerous internships and short films later and with his company "Lets be awesome" behind him, he can now be seen on the big screen with his feature film debut. A long road, but one that is far from over.