Travelling between Germany, France and Tunisia, Viola Shafik reconstructs and deconstructs the unknown life story of El Hedi Ben Salem through interviews with his companions and family members as well as archive material. With openness and slight naivety the interviewees explain how “Ali” became an oriental object of projection for the Fassbinder group, while El Hedi Ben Salem, the human being, was overlooked in order to establish the foreigner as “other.” A no-frills examination of a piece of German and Munich film history.
El Hedi ben Salem
as Self (archive footage)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
as Self (archive footage)
Abd El-Kader Jarrary
as Self (Ben Salem's Son)
Hafsia Mellaim
as Self (Ben Salem's former wife)
Viola Shafik
as Self (voice)
Renate Leiffer
as Self
Irm Hermann
as Self
Karl Scheydt
as Self
Rudolf Waldemar Brem
as Self
Hans Hirschmüller
as Self
Hamdan Jarrary
as Self (Ben Salem's son)
Zeina Jarrary
as Self (Ben Salem's sister)
