Lola and Billy the Kid

Lola and Billy the Kid (Germany 1999) by Kutluğ Ataman: 17-year-old Murat (Baki Davrak) grows up in a Turkish family in Berlin-Kreuzberg and is secretly discovering his homosexuality. While exploring the queer scene, he meets the drag performer Lola (Gandi Mukli) and learns that Lola belongs to his own family: an older sibling once cast out by Osman, the strict family patriarch. Lola’s lover, the macho Bilidikid (Erdal Yıldız), wants to build a future with Lola, but only on his own terms. When a violent crime occurs, the search for the truth becomes an ordeal. Ataman tells a story of masculinity, double standards and the price of self-determination with both force and tenderness. The film opened the Panorama section of the 1999 Berlinale. In film history, it marks the emergence of German-Turkish cinema in the late 1990s. Like Fatih Akin’s “Short Sharp Shock” or Thomas Arslan’s “Dealer”, it breaks away from the so-called “cinema of affliction”, which mostly portrayed migrants as victims, and focuses instead on self-confident, complex characters. With its queer perspective, it is a milestone of this movement.