“No Beast. So Fierce”; Shakespeare, Women, and the world today

Borhan Ghorbani, in No Beast So Fierce, brings Shakespeare’s Richard III into present-day Berlin. Once again, Berlin — vast, intricate, and sprawling — emerges as one of the main characters in the first part of the film. Here, Shakespeare’s tale of the crown is replaced by a power struggle between two immigrant families who control Berlin’s mafia. This terrifying tension lasts from the very first moments of the film to its end, immersing the audience in an atmosphere of brutal and chilling violence. The film opens with murder and bloodshed between the two families, followed by a complex web of relationships involving two brothers and their sister, Rashida. These scenes, captured during a party with a camera that snakes through the characters, hint at an even darker conflict: Rashida intends to usurp power from her older brother. In fact, the tension within this family turns out to be more violent than their feud with the rival clan. From here, femininity becomes entangled with Rashida’s ruthless ambition, gradually escalating into overt violence that dominates the entire second half of the film. In this exclusive interview, Borhan Ghorbani speaks with Mo Abdi about the details of the film.