SONNE

The director Kurdwin Ayub and the actresses Melina Benli, Law Wallner and Maya Wopienka are available for interviews. Ulrich Seidl is not available for any interviews regarding SONNE. Thank you for your understanding!

SONNE by Kurdwin Ayub is celebrating its World Premiere at the 72. International Film Festival Berlin competing in the Encounters section. Produced by Ulrich Seidl, the debut feature film of the award-winning filmmaker is telling a story about empowerment and individual decisions in a world obsessed about identity.

SYNOPSIS

Three teenage girls from Vienna twerk in hijab and sing a pop song. A YouTube video of it makes them famous overnight, especially among Kurdish Muslims. Yesmin, the only one of the friends who is Kurdish herself, begins to distance herself more and more from her culture. Nati and Bella, on the other hand, seem fascinated by a world that is strange to them. When the girls meet two young Kurdish patriots, the situation threatens to escalate. A film about young people caught between social media and self-discovery, a story of rebellious young women.

Director and screenwriter Kurdwin Ayub was born in Iraq in 1990 and lives in Vienna. From 2008 – 2013 she studied painting and experimental animation film at the University of Applied Arts and performative art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 2011 and 2012, she received the MehrWERT Short Film Award of the Viennale and the Vienna Independent Shorts Newcomer Film Award in 2013. Seven of her works were screened in a special short film program at the BAFICI Festival for International Independent Cinema in Buenos Aires (2016), at the Sevilla European Film Festival (2016) and at the Viennale (2012). Her first feature-length film, the documentary PARADIES! PARADIES!, for which she is credited as director, screenwriter and director of photography, screened at international film festivals and won the Best Cinematography Award at Diagonale 2016, the New Waves Non Fiction Award at the Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo 2016 and the Carte Blanche Newcomer Award at the Duisburg Film Week 2016. Her short film BOOMERANG won the Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the Max Ophüls Preis Film Festival 2019.

SONNE is produced by Ulrich Seidl of Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion (Austria).

With the support of Austrian Film Institute, Vienna Film Fund. Supported by the Comeback grant for film and TV productions and in collaboration with ORF Film/Fernseh-Abkommen.

Production Company:
Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion GmbH / www.ulrichseidl.com

World Sales:
Cercamon
 / www.cercamon.biz

88 min. / 1:2,39 / 5:1 / Austria 2022 / Color / Feature