My Name Is Not Ali

Viola Shafik
2011-11-07


5.8
98 min

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

Name Character Team
El Hedi ben Salem Self (archive footage) Unowned
Rainer Werner Fassbinder Self (archive footage) Unowned
Abd El-Kader Jarrary Self (Ben Salem's Son) Unowned
Hafsia Mellaim Self (Ben Salem's former wife) Unowned
Viola Shafik Self (voice) Unowned
Renate Leiffer Self Unowned
Irm Hermann Self Unowned
Karl Scheydt Self Unowned
Rudolf Waldemar Brem Self Unowned
Hans Hirschmüller Self Unowned
Hamdan Jarrary Self (Ben Salem's son) Unowned
Zeina Jarrary Self (Ben Salem's sister) Unowned
Ahmed Lecomte Self (Ben Salem's nephew) Unowned
Reqaya Zkoura Self (Ben Salem's niece) Unowned
Chadhlia Zkoura Self (Ben Salem's niece) Unowned
Najat Ghribi Self (Ben Salem's daughter-in-law) Unowned
Kurt Raab Self (archive footage) Unowned
Thea Eymèsz Self Unowned
Nikolaus Notter Self Unowned
Marie Notter Self Unowned