| Short Sharp Shock | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Fatih Akın |
| Produced by | Stefan Schubert Ralph Schwingel |
| Written by | Fatih Akın |
| Starring | Mehmet Kurtuluş Aleksandar Jovanovic Adam Bousdoukos Regula Grauwiller |
| Music by | Ulrich Kodjo Wendt |
| Cinematography | Frank Barbian |
| Editing by | Andrew D. Bird |
| Studio | Wüste Filmproduktion Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) |
| Distributed by | PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Monopole-Pathé Bir Film Les Acacias Seven Films |
| Release date(s) | October 15, 1998 |
| Running time | 100 min |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
Short Sharp Shock (German: Kurz und schmerzlos) is an award-winning 1998 film directed by Turkish-German director Fatih Akın.
The film, which according to Rekin Teksoy, writing in Turkish Cinema, "focuses on the identity crises faced by German youth from various ethnic backgrounds,"[1] was the feature debut of the German-born director of Turkish descent and is said to have, "represented a new German-Turkish cinema."[2]
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Fatih Akın had been working on the screenplay for this film, which was his feature debut, while he was studying at the Hamburg College of the Arts and working on his earlier shorts Sensin... You're the One! and Weed.[3] The succes of these shorts allowed him to secure funding from the Hamburg-based film production company Wüste Filmproduktion for this film, which was shot on the streets of his hometown Altona, Hamburg.[2]
Gabriel (Mehmet Kurtuluş) the Turk, Bobby (Aleksandar Jovanovic) the Serb and Costa (Adam Bousdoukos) the Greek are three friends who used to form a neighborhood gang in Altona district of Hamburg. Following his release from prison Gabriel is ready for a new start on life. Bobby however has been doing jobs for crazed Albanian mobster Muhamer (Ralph Herforth) and his girlfriend Alice (Regula Grauwiller) turns to Gabriel for comfort. When Costa who has turned to petty theft and is dating Gabriel's sister Ceyda (İdil Üner) also joins Muhamer's gang, Gabriel intervenes to save his friends, an action which puts his dreams of retiring to Turkey at risk.
The film's director, Fatih Akın, makes a cameo appearance as the drug dealer Nejo.
The film was premiered at the 1998 Locarno International Film Festival and was screened at the 1998 Hamburg Film Festival before going on general release across Germany on 15 October 1998.
Following the release Akın said of the film, inspired by the work of Italian-American film director Martin Scorsese, that, “It took Scorsese and the other Italo-Americans 70 years to start making their films. The Maghribi-French needed 30 years for their cinéma beur. We were much quicker. We’re already doing it!”[2]
Katja Nicodemus, writing for Magazin-Deutschland, states "The plot of his first film, about a cordial friendship between a Turk, a Serb and a Greek, was put together right in front of his own front door. What emerged amidst red-light district bars, Turkish sofas and Serbian weddings was a lively image of a whole district, with its small-time crooks, its hussies and its local big shots. Short Sharp Shock represented a new German-Turkish cinema, expressing itself self-assuredly as it made its way onto German screens in the late 1990s. Interestingly enough, Akın’s most convincing films are still infused with the spirit of Hamburg-Altona, while the road movie In July (Im Juli, 2000) and the German-Italian family story Solino (2002) seem peculiarly anaemic."[2]
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