Sookee – Of Seahorses and Closets

Kerstin Polte - 2018 - Germany - 34 min

“Sookee – Of Seahorses and Closets” is a multilayered and intimate portrait of Sookee, a famous queer-feminist Hip Hop Artist and left-wing activist in Germany. She fights against sexism, homophobia and racism – in german society and, especially, in german hip-hop for years now. Wether she’s putting on make-up, performing on big stages, giving lectures for students or at school, rapping at a lesbian wedding, cooking with her mother or writing lyrics in a berlin park – her life and thoughts revolve always around her message: Tolerance and love instead of discrimination and stereotyping . Honesty instead of arrogance. Diversity instead of binary thinking. Seahorses instead of closets.

The screening for this film can be found in the short-film program Seahorses, Pussy-core and Queens.

Director: Kerstin Polte

Kerstin Polte wants to get you hooked. On the good stuff. Precisely: Intriguing feature films & series; appealing portraits and documentaries. Her stories and characters are magically strange, weirdly funny, and deeply touching. She is a scriptwriter, movie director and and a pioneer in collaborative story development. She was awarded as Kultur- und Kreativpilot; a title, the german government grants to outstandingly innovative creative people.

Kerstin graduated multiple film schools: she did her BA in film and theatre studies in Canada;, got a diploma in Media Arts at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany and her masters degree in filmdirection/scriptwriting at the University of Arts in Zurich, Switzerland. Her graduate film 510 meters above sea level screened at more than 150 international (queer and straight) film-festivals and received multiple awards. Her film Last round premiered at the int. Locarno Film Festival. Her cinema documentary Everything but Oom-Pa-Pa - a film about the world largest womens brass orchestra - was shown in german cinemas and received multiple audience awards at queer Filmfestivals (i.e. Hamburg, Hannover, Bremen, Freiburg and Zurich) .

Her debut feature film Cloud whispers - a poetical and funny road movie - won the award of the german critics association and the bavarian film price (best upcoming director). It was largely featured in german cinemas in spring 2018.

At the moment, her portrait about the queer-feminist Rapper sookee - of seahorses and closets is on his international festival tour. Moreover her next feature film Blind shells and several primetime TV series projects were just funded and commissioned.