As rational as Marion appears, both as a pilot and in her private life, she soon stops functioning properly when she meets Baran, a gigolo, on the Turkish coast and gets involved in a fictitious marriage to enable him to obtain German citizenship. What begins as a kind of trade-off soon turns into an emotional story of love and identity at the interface between two cultures.

Marion has the huge airplanes she pilots under as much control as her private life, or so, at least, it seems until she’s diagnosed with cancer. Without telling her partner, Raphael, this otherwise rational woman travels to the Turkish coast, where she meets Baran, a much younger gigolo. When he begs her to enter into a fictitious marriage to enable him to obtain German citizenship, she spontaneously agrees. "It's the spoken word that counts," she says at the rather unemotional wedding ceremony, where neither witnesses nor even a signature are required, and what begins as a kind of trade-off soon develops into an emotional story, set in everyday German life, of love, identity and integration at the interface between two cultures. With intricately rendered characters, for which he had an exceptionally unified ensemble at his disposal, director İlker Çatak develops a social and romantic drama which also raises important questions about migration policy and gender roles.


Press reviews:

"Baran (Ogulcan Arman Uslu) hitchhikes by truck to Marmaris, a tourist resort on the Turkish Riviera. The athletic young man works his way up from dishwasher to loverboy in a sex bar for German tourists where his customers, sexually aggressive German tourists, don’t always resemble Heidi Klum. Sometimes the man literally has to perform hard labour for several hours. German-born Turk İlker Çatak relates this all in a speedy manner, almost without dialogue and with and instinctive assurance. Çatak shows how a macho Turk has to prostitute himself. As an opening, this one has it all. (Manfred Riepe, epd-Film, 26.7.2019)

Right from the beginning, however, the mood between Baran and Marion is different. She’s not a woman seeking instant sex, and he makes no secret of the fact he’s unsatisfied with a few banknotes slipped to him by a Belgian woman. He wants the same rights to which she is entitled. He wants what he can't buy: an identity card that confirms he’s changed sides. But Marion makes her motive of reciprocity thoroughly explicit: 'You would do the same for me.' The phrase comes casually, but one could hardly characterise her character more precisely - a middle-aged German woman, a pilot by profession, a rationalist by nature. She simply performs an action that makes sense to her: only she can establish a level at which her and Baran’s passports correspond to one other. I Was, I Am, I Will Be is a film about the lottery upon which all social debates about open or closed borders are based. Director İlker Çatak, born in Berlin in 1984 as the son of Turkish immigrants, is familiar with both sides." (Bert Rebhandl, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2.8.2019)

“Çatak and his co-author Nils Mohl paint their characters with precision, characterising them first and foremost through their use of language with lifelike, sometimes caustic, hilarious dialogue. Reserved and careful, Baran uses few words, probably because he’s also discovered how they can backfire. Marion and Raphael engage in superficially witty, wordy exchanges, concealing the hurt and self-harm they inflict in manners as perfect as they’re destructive. Equal attention to detail is given to their environments, from the tourist resort’s gigolos via Marion's and Raphael's professional worlds to secondary locations like the registry office or a school – avoiding, for the most part, any obvious clichés. (...) Anne Ratte-Polle perfectly captures the role of Marion; her looks and gestures, not to mention her intonation, portray a picture of a deeply scarred woman who, over the years, has trained herself to protect herself with defences impenetrable even to herself. Together with counterpart Oğulcan Arman Uslu as Baran, she reveals her cracks. The chemistry between the actors is ideal, their interaction an example of perfect casting. Also notable is the absence of the overly German compulsion to explain, exchanged for the courage it takes to leave certain things unsaid. Responsible viewers may, for example, wonder why, at his urgent request, Marion decides to take Baran to Germany; they must combine - and tolerate - the characters’ conflicting emotions. From out of these contradictions a great tension arises; characters are complex and difficult to understand, as in real life, their actions and decisions unforeseeable.” (Julia Teichmann, Film-Dienst)


Frederik Lang

Production Country

France (FR), Germany (DE)

Production Period

2018/2019

Production Year

2019

color

color

Aspect Ratio

1:2,39 (CinemaScope)

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Feature Film

Genre

Love Film, Drama

Topic

Love, Relationship / Family, Sexuality, Europe, Psychology, Migration / Flight / Exile, Illness / Addiction / Physical impairment, Democracy / Human Rights

Available Media

DCP, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Digital Film

Original Version

German (de), English (en), Turkish (tr), French (fr)

DCP

Subtitles

German (partly), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Czech (cs), Croatian (hr)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

German (partly), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Czech (cs)

DVD

Subtitles

German (partly), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Czech (cs), Portuguese (Brazil) (pt), Spanish (es), German (full)

Digital Film

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Czech (cs), Chinese (short), German (full)