Status Yo!

Eine halbdokumentarische Mischform stellt der Berliner Film Status Yo! dar: Regisseur Till Hastreiter lässt Freunde und Bekannte aus Kreuzbergs Hip-Hop-Szene ganz normale Geschichten aus ihrem Alltag spielen. Fast am Ende des mit großem Wohlwollen aufgenommenen, durchwegs spontanen Werkes kommt es zu einer Schlägerei, bei der die Hip-Hopper ein paar Skinheads mittels Breakdance-Moves vermöbeln. Das hat durchaus die Qualität einer Action-Sequenz aus Matrix, kommt aber ganz ohne Drähte aus. (Alexandra Seitz)

I always wanted to make a “generation movie”, that is a film about young people with lots of music in it. Hip-Hop was the latest craze for the young people of my generation. So I decided to make a film about things associated with youth: young love, youth problems, the dreams of youth, and youth music. But I also wanted to make a film that young people could identify with, a film that was authentic and not dreamt up by old men. That then immediately created problems with securing the funding and with the decrepit structures. Just imagine me going to a TV station and saying, “I’d like to make a film with about a hundred dope-smoking Hip-Hoppers, none of whom has ever acted before...“ (Till Hastreiter)