A man, shaved bald, lies on a bed and quarrels with his hatred. He moans and twitches, while shocks to him under the skin. So Skin”, Guy Nattivs Panorama programme about an American neo-Nazi”. What is the keeps of the world, he has tattooed on his body and face cracks. The message: I am what you see. It should be final. As the death.

As the real Bryon Widner wanted to get away from the scene, was in many ways a painful process. He betrayed his environment to the FBI, emerged and underwent a lengthy procedure, with the signs on his house, also his former identity to extinguish. It was burned to some extent from the body.

it is Clear that a Film about a “human Monster”, as Guy formulated Nattiv, can’t play in the summer. However, the sun-lots of winter scenery, which has Nattiv found to be a drop-out drama in the middle West of the USA, has a strong tendency to Apocalyptic. The trees are bare, black skeleton in a white, frosty world. White-Trash families are living in dilapidated barracks. The racists like Gangs, you know, a sectarian Belief in the hardness together. The main character is in a kind of hibernation, holed up in your mental cave, the collapse gradually until at the end of their transformation of the summer dawns. She is the woman who rejected him, asking for intake, and in the Background, the Leaves on the trees to see the birds chirping.

Behind the mask

Because only you, who hides behind the mask detects: Jamie Bell, the cute boy from “Billy Elliot”. His appearance is the first starring role since “Hallam Foe” (2007) in a tailor-made Film. “Everyone has ,Billy Elliot’ in the head,” says Director Nattiv about his first encounter with the former child star, “but I had a man in front of me who wanted to explore a dark side. He told me that he would have the shit scared of the role, which I thought was only right.“

Jamie Bell is an unpretentious actor. What is even more surprising, since he was 14 as “Billy Elliot” world famous….Photo: imago/ZUMA Press

In the nearly two decades since his film debut as a ballet dance work, young passed, Bell moved to nondescript minor roles. He played all over the world with a child’s face, where the soldier’s helmet was too big, the weapon in the Hand hard, the poor children and orphans in search of the answers were, without having to know the right questions. His career was long under the shadow of a “permanent Childhood”, as Bell puts it. Under the eye of such greats as Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood and Peter Jackson, the Boy was grown up from Billingham slowly. “Ten years ago, I had a guy like Bryon Widner play,” he says.

The small table in a niche of the press centre of the Berlinale, he controls a half-drunken beer. Otherwise not endure all things, says the 34-Year-old and immediately in the matter. He knows his role, apparently, exactly, and it gives him pleasure to talk to, without any further ADO, the arc of his career from a 14-year-old ballet dancer in numerous supporting roles back to the point, has led, as he stands alone in the center. The beer glass he touches for the duration of the call.

Nattivs first U.S. production

“was, of Course, from a Film that I had shot as a child, to show the desire that I developed and adult was,” says Bell, with its harsh, mandatory voice. “In this case, attracted me. I look completely different to me otherwise would have to move. But most of all, that no one would wait on this Film.“

“Skin” after three feature films in Israel Nattivs first U.S. production. No one got you first want to Finance. “I heard a lot of no’s,” says Smiles of the elegant filmmaker with a Tony Curtis. The rash is a short film that he shot over a similar substance in his Garage was then. It is the story of a man from Arizona, who taught his ten year old son how to shoot on the border Mexican. One night he comes home drunk and held such a noise that the child considers him one of the invaders against which he has warned him to stay away. The Boy shoots father with his own weapon in the head. Nattiv is nominated with “Skin” (the short film) now for the Oscar.

The paved Nattiv the way for the story he wanted to tell actually, since he had seen in “Haaretz”, a sequence of images of Bryon Widners recovery. The photos showed the Ex-Nazi in various stages of his Resozialisation.

Of them wanted to Nattiv, 45 years old, born in Tel-Aviv, in America, as the first tell. Sure, there was “American History X” and “The Believer”, but both movies about the white were extremely emerged in America in a different time. At the end of the 90s, the neo-Nazis were regarded as outsiders, not worthy of attention. But now the racism outside of cities like L. A. and New found York everywhere. In the Form of a southern or large format lettering advertising flags signs. the white hatred is directed against a lot of Blacks, homosexuals, Jews, and Muslims. “For us Jews there has been always two safe places in the world. Israel and the United States. However, with the choice Trumps the climate has changed. The right has become so extreme. Also in Israel this is not the case. Now there is no safe place anymore.“

One cigarette after the other

There was already a television documentary about Widner (“Erasing Hate”), as Nattiv turned to him. In the email he mentioned his Jewish grandfather, a Holocaust survivor who had lived without Grimm. They met in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And they convinced each other. Finally, the Nazi dropout the filmmaker gave up the rights to his life story on a napkin. Four and a half years needed Nattiv for the script. Under Widners Instructions. “I had to talk no idea,” he says, “how the radical Right and behave. Also, I didn’t know what I was allowed to from price type after the FBI takes care of him. Although you can feel clearly, to convert as much Widner a better man wants, he can press the wrath of in just tedious. Like a Junkie who can come back at any time, if he is weak.”

get Off, but how? Of Jamie Bell in “Skin” embodied radical Right-wing must the betrayer be, to get out.Photo: Berlinale

And, of all things, should Jamie Bell embody. Its the toughest role until then, had been a slave in the sandals epic “The Eagle”. How dangerous would be the for him yourself?

Bell attended Widner and remained a few days. They sat in the Garage, because Widner was there, Smoking. And he put a cigarette after another. Bell asked to see the garage door. But Widner said it was not a good idea. He didn’t want to be shot.

That gave Bell an idea of what he was getting himself into. But that was not the worst of it. “I’m not the type to forgive easily,” he says, with both elbows on the table bent. “In the biography of my hero, there are definitely aspects that I can’t approve of. So I told him that he would not like me may be at the end.“

A sub-200 candidates

But morality is a poor ambition in the art. You may not want to keep. Life is too complicated. And Widner did not want to be what he was. He was orphaned as a child, under the influence of foster parents, involved him in their paranoid Nazi fantasies. He started a fast for their readiness to use violence infamous. Then he met a girl, and he could keep only if he was a traitor to the cause. Bell realized that him from Widners Lebenswerg separated not so much. “My life would have been different, if I hadn’t told with the 14 years someone: I choose you.“

Jamie Bell was one among 2000 candidates who had auditioned for the role of the proletarian. A refusal at that time would have let him to Billingham return, where he lived with his mother. And who knows what would have become of the ballet-boy. The “Guardian”, he once said: “There is a reason why I have difficult characters of the games, but he is hidden, and I like it.”

Against the early fame he fought back, often with roles, in which he remained unrecognizable. Such as “Tim” in Spielberg’s adaptation of Hergé’s Comics. Or as “The Thing”, a creature of Stone, in “the Fantastic Four”. The tattooed monster face Bryon Widners clears the dance boys from final, as the Bell in memory remained.

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film festival in Toronto, Our love is a riot

Martin Schwickert

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