Salami Aleikum

Salami Aleikum is a German movie with a fresh look, although that's mostly snaffled from Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain. It's got some great, fresh actors such as lead characters Navid Akhavan, Anna Böger and Michael Niavarni (the Iranian father). Unfortunately, like so many German comedies, it's simply not funny. Bringing odd people into weird situations and filming them in a comicbook style simply won't automatically lead to great comedy.

The story's about the struggles of a young Iranian immigrant to Germany. He's a bit of a wet shirt who rather knits and dreams himself away into Bollywood-esquire fantasies rather than work for his dad as a butcher. Then he gets marooned in the boondocks in East Germany (or basically, just anywhere in East Germany), where the native hillbillies first treat him like a second-rate human. Then they imagine him to be a wealthy Persian investor who will buy their run-down textiles factory, and treat him like the prince of Persia. He also finds his dream woman, who is about four times his size because she took hormones when she was an athlete before the fall of the wall (incidentally, in 1989 the the actress playing that role was actually 12 year old).

So we basically get to meet all sorts of looney people, but it never adds up to good entertainment. I gave up on the movie after about an hour. But I'm hopeful that the director will find a better script next time -- good luck.

The story of 'Salami Aleikum' deals with the vegetarian son of an Iranian butcher who is forced to adopt the family enterprise in the German city of Cologne in spite of his pangs of conscience. In order to overcome these, he spirits himself away into Bollywood fantasies of love songs and devotes himself to knitting a never-ending scarf. Fooled by a Polish conman, he winds up buying a flock of BSE-infected sheep in Poland, but suffers an accident in a garage on the way there. Assisted by the garage's female mechanic, a former East German shot-put Olympic hope disgraced after the reunification for taking steroids, he winds up falling in love with her, a relationship frowned upon her family until her father mistakes the butcher's son for a wool importer, targeting him for investing in the town's long defunct textile factory...

Yes, that's a lot of story heaved upon the viewer, and it's constantly being added to as well, with quirky remarks, jokes about inter-cultural communication, animated fantasy sequences etcetera etcetera, and a lot of this will be lost to a non-German viewer. Still, this film has absolutely magical moments, like when the parents of the lead's love interest deliver pretty international justifications for their xenophobia (like 9/11), only to change their tune 180 degrees once they suspect that there's money to be earned. At its best, 'Salami Aleikum' evokes memories of Tati or Kusturica, like when the Iranian and East German fathers compare the uniforms of their now defunct homelands and compliment each other as to how dashing they look. Considering that this is a German film, and that German films are almost always somber, sullen and dreadful to watch, such imagery is priceless.

If 'Salami Aleikum' is not perfect, then because it suffers from the typical malaise of a debut feature: trying to be too many things at once. But helmer Ali Samadi Ahadi, who previously co-directed the excellent and sensitive child soldier documentary 'Lost Children', is definitely working on a visual language of his own.

"Salami Aleikum" is a Persian-German Comedy. It was published in 2010. Mohsen a sensitive young man lives in Cologne, Germany with his parents. His father, immigrated from Iran, is a butcher, and wants Mohsen to take over his butchery because his license was taken away by the police. Because Mohsen is afraid of killing animals and always knits his "scarf of life" when he is nervous and scared, he gets to know to a polish fraud who offers him "the most beautiful sheep" for a low price and also slaughtered. Without his father's permission he starts his journey to Poland. Unfortunately on the way there his car does not work properly anymore. He has to stay in a small village in Eastern Germany where many racists live. There he meets the vegetarian Ana, a tall and broad-shouldered young woman. He falls in love with her immediately. In that very moment Mohsen starts becoming entangled in a web of lies...

Similar to Bollywood films, there are several colourful scenes in "Salami Aleikum" where everyone sings and dances and is happy. Even though some funny parts are spoken in the Persian language, non-Iranians can still laugh about the jokes as there are subtitles in those parts. Even the third time I watched the film I still could laugh about the jokes. It is indeed funny to watch Mohsen trying to avoid letting Ana know that he actually is a butcher's son and you surely laugh at the misunderstandings between their parents. This is an ideal film for those who want to watch something different and not only the commonly known comedies full of clichés. I would recommend "Salami Aleikum" especially to Iranians and those who are interested in their culture. Navid Akhavan and Michael Niavarani, a well known Comedian living in Austria, did a great job and acted very powerfully.

The first 10 min. and then at some points in the movie, he reminds me on "Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain", but why should this masterpiece being the only film in his special genre. The movie make remembrances of human life's, wishful thinking's or scenes who were made in other types in a related way J.P. Jeunet goes. The director did a great job I think. Especially his manner to play with stereotypes. The way a lot of German people see the Arabic people in our country is the way Ali Samadi Ahadi let the German people react on the love story of a German and a "persian". "You can't marry a Arab!" - so funny, and in this way he show us our double entendre. And in the other way he let the Arabic descended family have prejudices against the former GDR. This juggling in combination with social themes and this refreshing special "Amélie Poulain"-style makes the movie very great for people who like movies like the cited or maybe "Luna Papa", too.

another politically driven name with no talent as a director whatsoever.the film is just terrible and this guy gets full banking to make another film ? great directors used to really make movies, know their craft and leave this planet with much to learn from as now all you have to do or to be is to connect yourself to the politics of the day. really a waste of time and money.this movie is so below the average like so many European trash films " not trash as in Trash Genre of course, since those films are sometimes greatly executed and with brilliant results". the ac tings are far below average, and the twist and turns and story is so ordinary, i would not even give a student the money to do such a film as a start movie for a lousy career. sorry, i am just sounding angry perhaps but am not but seriously critical of all Iranian films, Iranian Directors and the rest of the world of cinema who is most opportunistically filling their pockets and writing critics worthy of Orson Wells films but instead for all these ordinary dramas and really inferior films in all perspectives from concepts to direction and production as well the actors are just O.K.