Lola and Billy the Kid

Lola and Bilidikid

1999, Germany)
Director: Ataman, E. Kutlug
Producer: Hagemann, Martin
Starring: Baki Davrak, Erdal Yildiz, Gandi Mukli, Inge Keller, Michael Gerber
Directed by E. Kutlug Ataman

" Murat vive en Berlín, tiene 17 años y es gay. Se siente atraído por la subcultura de los bares de travestis y de prostitutución masculina, al mismo tiempo que descubre un terrible secreto familiar, que lo empuja a buscar su propio camino en la vida. El director Kutlug Ataman nació en Estambul en 1961 y estudió cine en París y Los Angeles. Filmó Lola y Bilidikid en escenarios reales de Berlín y actualmente vive en Estambul, donde se ha convertido en referente y portavoz de la comunidad gay de Turquía, como agitador cultural y diversas publicaciones................"
Venture into a new world never before shown: the gay and transgendered subculture of German Turkish immigrants. Murak is a dark-eyed, mop-haired 16-year-old trying to cope with his emerging gay sexuality one especially at odds with his traditionalist Turkish family lorded over by his overly possessive and frequently violent older brother. The teen, on his nocturnal cruising in Berlin’s parks, soon becomes friends with a colorful group of gay hustlers and cross-dressers. His true protector (and secretly much more so) is transvestite Lola (Gandi Mukli), a cabaret singer who lives with her butch but self-hating boyfriend Bili (Erdal Yildiz), a sexually confused and belligerent man who desperately wants Lola to have a sex-change operation. Violence, love and the revelations of a family’s buried secrets are contained in this emotionally complex, atmospheric melodrama. Rarely has a film so explosively exposed the displacement of such marginalized characters Muslims in a Christian country, Turks living in Germany and gays in a straight world. (In Turkish and German with English subtitles)

Whereas good movies are usually judged by their direction, acting, and writing (among other things), a great movie is distinguished by its ability to get viewers to question, if only for a moment, their own fundamental understanding of the people around them and the world in which they live. Lola and Billy the Kid easily qualifies as the latter.

Far more than a simple coming-of-age-and-coming-out story, this riveting and emotional tale portrays the Turkish immigrants' world of relative poverty and grime amidst Germany's ostensible wealth. It is a world where, for gay Turks, mortal danger can lurk in any shadow, around any corner, even in one's own home -- a world which, as director Kutlug Ataman says, is painted in "mascara and blood."
Lola begins with two lovers -- drag queen Lola, played with misty-eyed aplomb by Gandi Mukli, and her hustler boyfriend Bilidikid, a sexy and infuriatingly homophobic Erdal Yildiz -- who live on the edge financially and emotionally in the seamy gay underworld of Berlin's Turkish youth. Lola and Bili are strapped for cash, and decide to appeal to Lola's long-lost and virulently homophobic older brother Osman for her rightful inheritance. In doing so she meets Murat, the 17-year-old brother she never knew, who in turn is struggling with his own sexuality. Upon discovering Osman's treachery, Murat runs away from home and dives into a community that's forced to walk a precarious line between the white, Christian, German populace -- which is generally tolerant of homosexuality but can be terribly racist -- and their own unforgivingly homophobic Muslim people.
And when Lola is murdered, Bili uses Murat in a scheme to avenge her, leading them on an eye-opening, potentially fatal journey whose end is both grimly predictable and hypnotically suspenseful.
Sequences in a subplot concerning the misadventures of Bili's friend Iskender, his older john-cum-lover Friedrich, Friedrich's caustic mother Ute, and Lola's drag buddies Kalipso and Shehrazade are interspersed throughout the film and offer the viewer much-needed periods of well-timed and well-directed comic relief. Kalipso's bitch-fest with a neighboring Muslim housewife is a hoot, and the knowing, aristocratic Ute crams more sass into a single bon mot than could be found in a barful of bitter old queens. This lighter take on the ethnic tensions faced by the Turks and the Germans is a refreshing counterpoint to the rest of Lola's bleakness.
Ataman has not only offered us a well-crafted film, but an important one as well. The tragedy that befalls the title characters is cathartic for everyone else; from their violent ending springs a hopeful new beginning. The director himself said he wants all "gay, lesbian and heterosexual men and women who care about their own destiny, their journey in life, who think about the meaning of their own lives, to see this film with their loved ones." I couldn't agree more.
--Will Way

Baki Davrak
Filmografia como Actor
-Meine verrückte türkische Hochzeit (2006) (TV)
-Blond: Eva Blond! - Der Zwerg im Schließfach (2004) (TV)
- "Wolffs Revier" ... aka Wolff's Turf
- Tod in Uniform (2004) TV Episode .... Klaus Sänger
- Masken (2001)
-Null Uhr 12 (2001) .... Polizist 4
-Planet Alex (2001) .... Jo
-Nass (2001)
-"Puma - Kämpfer mit Herz, Der"
- Bruderliebe (2000) TV Episode .... Jens Schlegel
-Scardanelli (2000) .... Waiblinger (jung)
-Braut, Die (1999) .... August Goethe, erwachsen
-Tatort - Kinder der Gewalt (1999) (TV)
-"Balko"
- Baby-Stress (1999) TV Episode .... Roman
-Dealer (1999) .... Zeki
-Lola + Bilidikid (1999) .... Murat
-Bevor der Tag anbricht (1999) .... Young Soldier

Erdal Yildiz
The German-Turkish actor debuetierte 1999 equal w th several films in the cinema: Its roles in April chil ren", "Lola & Bilidikid", "Finlandia" and "friends made Erdal Yildiz a recognized actor of the Germa film. Besides it participated in numerous ku zfilme and television productions as for instance the popular "E Blond" consequences and unites" Tatort"expenditures. On the 55
Biografie
Erdal Yildiz was born 1966 in Tunceli (Turkey). Its family went soon to Germany, where it buildup. Still during the school Yildiz showed a strong inclination to the playthingplaything plaything. It visited then 1991-1993 in New York the Lee Strasberg Theatre of institutes. In the meantime Yildiz already stood for several theatre productions on the stage and for some kurzfilme before the camera. To New Yorker Institut led it for the pieces of stage of "A Street Named the Irish" and "Cat on A Hot Tin Roof" also direction.
Its feature debut as actors submitted Yildiz 1999 into "April children" from Yueksel Yavuz. Here and in the following film "Lola & Bilidikid" (1999) from Kutlu Atamannn he played the main role.
Beside Benno leading man and Christiane Paul played Yildiz in addition into "friends" (1999) from Martin Eigler.
In the year 2001 Yildiz was for the first time in the television film "EH blond - the murderer speaks the judgement" to see. 2002 followed "EH blond - the book of the offenses" and the "Tatort" consequence" nut/mother love ".
Yildiz played 2003 in the two "EH Blond" consequences" as the life plays in such a way "and" EH blond and the second dwarf in the safe-deposit box ". In the cinema he was to be seen in "Odins revenge" by Hannes Stoehr.
Under the direction of Til Schweiger played Yildiz 2004 in "barefoot". As the second co-operation with Stoehr now also the episode film "One Day was turned off in Europe" in four weeks at several European scenes in Spain, Russia, Turkey and in Berlin. Here Yildiz played among other things at the side of Florian Lukas .
To beginning of the year 2005 the "EH Blond" consequence" received as the life play in such a way "(2003) a nominating for the Grimme price, which was lent in the March of the yearly.
As study of different and nevertheless growing together Europe "One Day was in Europe" in February 2005 as one of the three German competition contributions on the 55. To see Berlinale.

Gandi Mukli ran with genuine Transvestiten one evening in woman dresses by Berlin and had to experience, as veraechtlich it was every now and then put on from Turks as from Germans. "there you must develop yourself a powerful shield." Its Lola dreams secretly about a normal civil life, plays therefore also so a kind master role in their Transen clique. Lolas of loved Bilidikid against it looks its hair-mad in its leather jacket and like a James Dean blend. Leave it leans in the next scene at the tresen of the Transvestitenclubs, hardly twists an expression, when it is put on of a line boy. "he dreams America about the Hollywood . But everyone sees that it will never come there. That is the tragic at the figure ", explains Erdal Yildiz, for which the film has courses "of a modern Westerns".