Beautiful and atmospheric but essentially empty and pointless, Berlin Alexanderplatz hits you with the bluntness of a sledgehammer.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
A heavy-handed reimagining.
Although promising a deep-cut dash of contemporary topicality by reimagining the main character as an undocumented African immigrant, there is the sense that the unimpeachable craft and performances — especially from rivetingly charismatic lead Welket Bungué — ultimately add up to just too slick a package.
The paradox is that in modernising Berlin Alexanderplatz, Qurbani has created an ambitious but also stridently melodramatic moral parable that seems oddly dated.
The New York Times by Nicolas Rapold
Reinhold exerts a Svengali-like hold on Franz and the women they know, though the character’s questionable magnetism makes this dynamic increasingly baffling.