No hard feelings

“I think I am many different things,” Parvis says in No hard feelings. As a young homosexual German of Iranian descent, he has to deal with racism and homophobia. We get to see how he has to spell his name over and over again, how he gets the question ‘Where are you from?’ at raves, and how he gets confronted with racist remarks on Grindr-dates. He is sentenced to 120 hours of community service, so he goes to work in a refugee centre in Hildesheim, close to Hannover. The young men are suspicious and keep an eye on him, because according to them, ‘that shit’, being homosexual, is contagious. Parvis gets to know Amon and Banafshe, siblings who fled Iran and now find ‘home’ with each other.

No hard feelings tells the story of first and second generation immigrants, of a young German who does not see himself in the native country of his parents. The last time Parvis was in Iran, everyone talked to him in English, and when he returned to Germany, he stopped calling himself Iranian. Above all it is a pulsating film about twenty-year-olds who want to scream to the world they are the future, and that is accompanied by long nights, a beating soundtrack, and even Sailor Moon. Starting at the Sommerfest at the refugee centre, we go to other stops in German nightlife: the hookah lounge, the Spätverkauf, the midnight snack and the outpouring when the sun starts to rise.