Ein nasser Hund (2021)

Sixteen-year-old Iranian Soheil moves with his parents from quiet, middle-class Göttingen to Berlin-Wedding. He soon befriends the teenagers in Husseyn’s gang. “Turks, Arabs, Kurds—we’re all like family in Wedding,” Husseyn tells him by way of welcome. What his new friends don’t know is that Soheil is Jewish. When he wears his Star of David necklace in a supermarket, two Arab teenagers insult him and drive him out. From then on, Soheil keeps his Jewish heritage secret. He learns quickly. He adapts his speech to the local street slang, roams around with the gang, and becomes a graffiti artist. His tags are cool; “King Star” is his pseudonym. He is determined to fit in: during a fight with a gang from Kreuzberg, he is the first to stab someone, and he sells drugs. To the horror of his loving, concerned parents, Soheil turns into a petty criminal who is brought home by the police with increasing frequency. His standing in the gang grows, and everyone calls him their brother. Soheil falls in love with his Turkish schoolmate Selma and experiences his first love with her. Husseyn becomes his best friend. To avoid drawing attention to himself, he even accompanies Husseyn to the mosque. But one day, Selma comes to pick up a dress from his parents’ tailor shop and meets his Jewish relatives from Tel Aviv there. Soheil decides to stop denying who he is and openly comes out as Jewish to his clique. Now he is caught between all sides and faces hostility from his former friends. Selma and Husseyn, too, don’t know how to deal with the situation as it escalates.