Sonne von Kurdwin Ayub • Kino (Preview)

Sonne (Sun) is a film about three teenage friends in Vienna whose self-made video clip showing Yesmin, Bella and Nati twerking in hijabs to R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion goes viral. They gain global prominence overnight. Contrary to what Yesmin, the only Kurdish girl in the band, has expected, her father wholeheartedly embraces her life as a band member, and happily drives the three teenagers from one gig to the next. But Yesmin develops a growing sense of ambivalence towards the take-for-grantedness which seems to drive the act of cultural appropriation by her two fellow-performers on stage. Nati and Bella, however, find it hard to understand what’s troubling Yesmin, adopting a distanced attitude towards her friend’s feelings. The situation is threatening to escalate when two Kurdish guys seem to start flirting with Nati and Bella at a gig.

This stunning coming-of-age film debut has won the 2022 award “Best Feature Debut” of GWFF (German collection society for film and television works) at the Berlinale festival. It is a story about female rebellion and young adults torn between social media fame and finding themselves.

Kurdwin Ayub was born in Iraq in 1990. She lives and works as a director and screenwriter in Vienna. 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. Since 2010, her works are shown on film festivals and solo presentations at home and abroad. In 2011 and 2012 Ayub received the Viennale Short Film Award and in 2013 the Vienna Independent Shorts Newcomer Film Award. Her first feature film, the documentary Paradies! Paradies!, written, directed and filmed by Ayub, was screened at various international film festivals and won the Best Cinematography Award at the 2016 Diagonale, the New Waves Non Fiction Award at the Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo 2016 and the Carte Blanche Newcomer Award at the Duisburger Filmwoche, also in 2016. For her feature film debut Sonne, she won the GWFF’s Best First Feature Award at the Berlinale 2022.