My Name Is Not Ali

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 archival 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.

Cast

El Hedi ben Salem

Self (archive footage)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Self (archive footage)

Abd El-Kader Jarrary

Self (Ben Salem's Son)

Hafsia Mellaim

Self (Ben Salem's former wife)

Viola Shafik

Self (voice)

Renate Leiffer

Self

Irm Hermann

Self

Karl Scheydt

Self

Rudolf Waldemar Brem

Self

Hans Hirschmüller

Self