Page - 59 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

59 conVerting Kebab and currency into community size another aspect of the district’s history, namely, its history of revolt, Riebl makes a distinctive film debut with Planet Ot- takring, after many years of working in television as a camera- man and director of police procedurals such as Kommissar Rex [Commissioner Rex], Tatort [Crime Scene], Schnell ermittelt [Fast Forward], and CopStories. In the first part of the chapter, I exam- ine Murnberger’s and Barthel’s films before turning to Riebl’s. Culture-Clash Comedies Both of Wolfgang Murnberger’s Kebab films and Holger Barthel’s Die Freischwimmerin focus on the problems characters of Turk- ish heritage encounter fitting into everyday life in Ottakring. In the Kebab films, two small businessmen — one a bigoted but supposedly likeable Austrian coffeeshop owner, played by the well-known Viennese cabaretist, Andreas Vitásek, the other an upstanding restauranteur, played by Turkish-German Tim Sey- fi, whose film appearances include Gegen die Wand [Against the Wall] (2004, dir. Fatih Akin) — find that they have been cheated in the purchase of the same property and need to find a way to coexist in relative peace for the prosperity of both. For its part Die Freischwimmerin brings two fatherless, headstrong yet trou- bled young women together through their love of swimming and sees the Austrian teacher, played by Viennese-born Emily Cox, win over the Turkish student, played by Berlin-born Selen Savas (Brier 2014), for the school swim team by first convincing her to wear a burkini and then giving her the choice to wear a competitive swimsuit to help out the school’s relay team in the big annual competition. The Kebab films and Die Freischwim- merin belong to the category of film called “culture-clash Komö- dien” in German and “multicultural comedies” in English.3 In Friedhof und Brunnenmarkt abgespielt” [“my childhood took place between the cemetery and the Brunnenmarkt in Ottakring”] (“Presseheft: LUNAFILM Präsentiert Planet Ottakring, Ein Film von Michi Riebl” 2015)), while Murnberger is from Wiener Neustadt and Barthel, from Stuttgart. 3 I prefer to use a translation of the already anglicized German term as it captures the clashing dynamic of the genre, which my analysis in this sec-