Nuran David Calis

9 June 2014 marked ten years since a nail bomb attached to a bike injured 22 people, some gravely, and destroyed multiple shops in the Keupstraße in Cologne. The targets of the cowardly attack were the people living in the street, which was mainly characterised by its Turkish residents, and with them the ideal of an open society. The attack was exposed in 2011 as being committed by the right-wing terror group National Socialist Underground (NSU), but for seven years previously the police and politicians had denied that there was a xenophobic background to the crime. Instead, the residents themselves became the focus of the investigations: the real victims of the attack became potential perpetrators.

Now, ten years after the attack, the NSU terror and its aftermath are examined by the court in Munich. Author, director and movie-maker Nuran David Calis spent a year meeting residents and shop owners in the Keupstraße in Cologne again and again, asking them how they experienced the attack and its aftermath. But he also asked for the stories of today’s Keupstraße and how life in this special street has changed over the years.
Like this, a depiction of the Keupstraße is developed from the viewpoint of the people who live there. And they tell the story themselves – residents and shop owners stand on stage together with the actors.
Performed in the theatre and on the Keupstraße itself, in the immediate vicinity of the Depot. (Announcement Schauspiel Köln)