Murat Kurnaz’s case dates back almost 20 years. Why this film now?
Andreas Dresden: We didn’t choose that. It just took a long time to develop the material. In the beginning, of course, I was interested in the story of Murat Kurnaz. I had read his book and what he describes there appealed to my sense of wrongdoing. I find it incredible that something like Guantanamo existed and unfortunately still exists today. That an innocent young man was imprisoned and tortured there for five years and German politicians didn’t do anything about it. After many discussions with Murat, however, I realized that I was not getting anywhere with his perspective. If you want to tell Guantanamo from the inside, it’s just Kafkaesque and completely hopeless. That’s how the idea came about to tell the story from the point of view of his mother Rabiye. She is simply magical.
Laila Stieler: I liked the mother’s perspective straight away. I couldn’t have written a film about Murat Kurnaz in Guantanamo, I couldn’t have told the story of this hopelessness. It was important to me to describe this special case, and to describe it precisely, but with the mother’s perspective we gain another universality.
Rabbi Kurnaz was shot by George W. Bush
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The film “Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W.Bush” tells the story of the Bremen filmmaker Murat Kurnaz from his mother’s point of view. He spent five years innocently and without charge in the US prison camp Guantanamo in Cuba after American troops in Afghanistan picked him up as a suspected Taliban fighter. His mother Rabiye fought with the Bremen lawyer Bernhard Docke for her son’s release. Together they went before the highest American court – and were successful.
Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W.Bush, Director: Andreas Dresen, Screenplay: Laila Stieler, 118 minutes, In cinemas now
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So the impetus for making this film was the injustice done to Murat Kurnaz?
Dresden: Yes, of course. And this injustice is not over yet, even though Murat has been back at home in Bremen for 15 years. For more than 20 years people have been sitting in extreme conditions without trial in Guantanamo. And the world has come to terms with it. In connection with Murat Kurnaz, I find the behavior of the German government particularly outrageous. She refused him her help just because he had a Turkish passport. This is scandalous. And unfortunately, to this day, German politicians are not ready to admit that it was a huge human and political mistake.
stalker: In this respect, Murat’s story is not really over yet.
Dresden: Yes, it’s not over at all. This family has been wronged. And this injustice continues.
Is Bernhard Docke, Rabiye Kurnaz’s lawyer, still fighting for recognition of this injustice?
Dresden: no The legal case is over. But there are other ways to create publicity and, in the best case, to achieve justice. Our film for example. At least that’s how the Kurnaz family has the feeling that they are interested in their fate and that they are being heard. To me, that’s part of moral redemption. Murat Kurnaz had at least five years of his life stolen.
How does he actually see the case now?
Dresden: I’m always amazed at how relaxed he is about it. During one of our conversations, I asked him if he actually hated Americans. To which he only replied: Why should I do that? Even among the guards there were such and such. He’s really sovereign there.
stalker: I would even say gentle. That certainly has something to do with his faith, which is often portrayed as something fundamentally aggressive.
How did Murat, his mother and Bernhard Docke react when you told them that they wanted to tell your film from their perspective?
Dresden: They immediately understood what we were planning and were very open. My problem, that I didn’t know how to tell Guantanamo from the beautiful, secure, German perspective, was easy to understand. The things Murat told me are so outrageous that I just can’t imagine them. So how should I have staged them? Incidentally, a starting point for thinking about the perspective of mother and lawyer was a small incident that Bernhard Docke told me. The two of them rode in a taxi in New York and when the driver found out why the two were in town, he let them ride for free because, as he said, he no longer wanted to be ashamed of his country. This scene can also be found in our film. Laila developed them very nicely in the script.
You’re basically telling a David versus Goliath story.
stalker: Exactly that. That a Turkish housewife from Hemelingen finally stands before the Supreme Court and sues the American president is something no screenwriter could have imagined better. But it really happened. The exciting thing about the film is that the perspective we are telling was hardly known to anyone.
