(IndieKino Mag) Review: Contra
A student with Arab roots and a racist professor have to pull themselves together. Remake of the French comedy LE BRIO.
Naima (Nilam Farooq) does not yet have such a real plan. The only thing that is certain is that she would like to study and do something better with her life than her petty brother and mother, with whom she lives in a prefabricated building in Frankfurt. But life between studying and family is not easy to reconcile, and when Naima arrives late for Professor Pohl's (Christoph Maria Herbst) lecture on the first day of all things, he insults her in front of the assembled student body with racist slogans. Naima feels challenged and signs up for the debating competition to prove to Pohl that she is more than his resentment. In times of social media, however, it doesn't take long and a video of his slogans ends up online. Pohl is quoted as director and condemned to
The story may sound familiar, after all it is based on THE BRILLIANT MADEMOISELLE NEILAby Yvan Attal in 2018. As was already the case with DER FIRST NAME, Sönke Wortmann took the French template and adapted it together with screenwriter Doron Wisotzky (SCHLUSSMACHER) for a German audience. The subject of discrimination is cleverly present on two levels. Wisotzky, who grew up in Frankfurt, deals with the everyday reality of people with a migration background as well as that of women in an academic environment. In addition, he brings some of his own ideas into the German version with elements such as the “potato party” to celebrate German citizenship, but in the end primarily focuses on a plot that attracts the public. Christoph Maria Herbst shines again as a chauvinistic asshole after “Stromberg”. The film is supported by the "Soko Leipzig" commissioner Nilam Farooq.