Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush

Rabiye Kurnaz is a housewife with three children living in Bremen. Her son Murat travels to Pakistan at the end of 2001 and does not come back; he has been handed to American authorities and taken to Guantánamo. Rabiye goes to the police, applies to the authorities, and gets no answer from anyone. Eventually she meets the human rights lawyer Bernhard Docke. The two enter a legal fight running from Germany to Washington, and the case reaches the United States Supreme Court. Andreas Dresen's film rests on real events. The narrative opens a heavy subject in a comic register; Rabiye's persistence, her unfamiliarity with legal language, and the mismatch between her and the lawyer are the source of the humour. But the film does not soften what happened at Guantánamo. Meltem Kaptan plays Rabiye and won the Silver Bear for best leading performance at the Berlin Film Festival in 2022; the screenwriter Laila Stieler took the Silver Bear for screenplay. Alexander Scheer plays the lawyer. Who it's for: Viewers who like German drama, adaptations of real events, and narratives of legal struggle. Who it's not for: The comic register may strike some as mismatched with the subject. Murat's own experience also stays in the background.