Film Tip: KitKat – Kinks of Berlin

Susanne Heuer: I’m Susanne Heuer. I’m the author and playwright.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: I’m Cordula Kablitz-Post. I’m the producer of KitKat – Kinks of Berlin.

Susanne Heuer: I think they first started developing the idea for the film in 2019. At first, it was this crazy idea that came up during the pandemic, but the film quickly developed away from that focus.

My connection to it comes, I think, through my performance work. Throughout my career, I have always been closely connected to club culture in terms of content. I have always viewed the club as a cultural workplace and a meeting place. That was what made it particularly exciting for me.

Since we started making this film, we have also seen how hard clubs are fighting, how much the scene has shrunk and how threatened these places are. I think the longer we worked on it, the more we realised how important the film actually is. And it is not just about club culture, but also about individuals and ways of life that do not necessarily conform to the so-called “norm”. In the current political situation, that is incredibly important.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: I met director Philipp Fussenegger when he received the newcomer prize at the First Steps Awards. I found him interesting, and I thought his film was great. It was an interesting combination. In the emerging film scene, people are often very well-behaved and sometimes quite conformist, so you rarely come across a dazzling figure like Philipp.

When he came up with the idea of making a film about the KitKat Club, I wasn’t sure whether it was such a good idea. The last time I had been to KitKat was in the 1990s, and I have to say it wasn’t really my thing. Back then, I didn’t think it was as cool or hip as it is today. My focus was entirely on the music, while the word “kink” still had negative connotations.That’s why I wasn’t convinced at first. But then he said, “Let’s go there and take a look,” and I really thought, “Wow, it has completely changed.” Philipp was already a regular at the time. Kirsten Krüger, one of the operators, approached him and said, “We don’t even know whether KitKat will still exist in a few years, so you could make a film about it now.” That’s how it all started.

Susanne Heuer: I think the film is a bit of a Trojan horse for the subject of consent. People want to watch it because they want to know what happens behind KitKat’s doors, out of a certain curiosity and perhaps also a degree of sensationalism. But the film develops in such a way that the doors you look behind belong to people whom many viewers might otherwise never encounter. You become so close to them that you can no longer shut yourself off from them.

And, of course, an underlying question is what we can learn from the kink scene, which has its problems like any other scene. One thing we can learn is that you can do anything, but you have to communicate, because there is no freedom without rules.

You also have these typical Berlin themes: What am I doing with my life? Who am I? Who likes me? What do I want to do with my life? Can I make my dream come true? And how?

Cordula Kablitz-Post: I do also believe that consent has become an incredibly important issue, and that wasn’t the case before.

Susanne Heuer: In principle, there is a desire within the sex-positive and club scenes to create safer spaces through certain rules of conduct. Once those have been established, people can interact more freely. I wouldn’t want to judge whether KitKat is a club where strict codes of conduct are consistently applied.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: As I said, consent has become an incredibly important issue, and that wasn’t the case, or at least it wasn’t talked about so publicly, before. There has also been some negative news about KitKat concerning that, which is why I think they are paying even closer attention to it now, making it a motto.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: That was, of course, a matter of trust on Philipp’s part, because he has a very good relationship with Kirsten Krüger and Simon Thaur, the Founders and operators of KitKat. Only people who signed a participation agreement are clearly visible on camera. They were asked beforehand, and if someone happened to step in front of the camera inside the club, they were immediately asked whether they were comfortable with being filmed and, if so, to sign the agreement.

There was one isolated case in which someone called us in tears the next day and said that although they had signed something, they no longer wanted to be part of the film. Of course, we took that absolutely seriously, and that person does not appear in the film.

Afterwards, we blurred everyone for whom we did not have a participation agreement, so none of the people who did not consent can be recognized. But it isn’t “Spiegel TV-style blurring”. It was a long artistic process because it still had to look good and we didn’t want to destroy the image. We took that seriously and put a great deal of time and effort into the grading so that the result would feel artistic.

Dino Osmanović, the cinematographer, is truly brilliant and very sensitive. Filming is always tricky, especially in an environment like this. People don’t want to feel watched; they simply want to be free. A camera can be intrusive, especially when it has a light attached to it. Everything was therefore filmed with highly light-sensitive lenses. There were no additional lights on set and nothing that could disturb the atmosphere.

Susanne Heuer: Dino Osmanović can do that. He has the ability to get incredibly close to something, and he has such a gentle eye, even as a person. He makes a pan in which you see exactly enough, but he doesn’t intrude.

There are scenes that are genuinely extreme: the people by the pool, those taking part in the orgies and then the so-called “Fickstutenmarkt”. Only Dino could have filmed these scenes in that way. I honestly don’t know how he does it, but the result always feels incredibly affectionate.

We always took great care to make sure that people were completely comfortable with us showing what was happening there.

Susanne Heuer: All cats are grey at night. Black and white also brings the composition of the images more clearly into focus. Day and night. I like that. I like slow, arthouse films in black and white. I would say that it allows you to get closer without making everything feel too exposed.

Judy Landkammer, our editor, did a really great job. It’s crazy because while watching the movie, you really feel as though you’re inside the club. The music selection was also a constant back and forth. The film is edited around the music, so it has a bit of a music-video quality. These montages are typical Judy. Over and over again, you go into this tunnel and come out to the club. Because you go to the club again and again. It’s reality for many people. There are people who go to KitKat every weekend. They have the club symbol tattooed on them. It’s a way of life. 

Cordula Kablitz-Post: Philipp and Dino came up with the idea at some point because they wanted to give the film a particular aesthetic. I have to say, the distributor initially panicked and said, “For God’s sake, please don’t make it black and white. That won’t be received as well.” But I hope people will go and see it anyway.

I think it makes the images more beautiful and distinctive. It gives the whole thing a particular quality and makes it feel less arbitrary, because we see images everywhere now. We live in an oversaturated world of images, and I think black and white is more likely to give the film an artistic dimension.

Susanne Heuer: My fear wasn’t that the film would take away the club’s magic, but rather that it would romanticise it too much. I was worried that we might accidentally make a kind of utopian advertisement for a particular club or for club culture in general. You have to be very careful about that.

A club like this is always just a microcosm of what is happening more broadly. KitKat is a difficult place. It has a history, and that means I wouldn’t recommend that everyone go there. But I also wouldn’t say that everyone there is simply taking drugs and having sex with everything that moves. It was really important for me to find that balance.

The people at the centre of the film meet and connect there. They probably wouldn’t get to know one another outside the club because they are all very different. It really is a meeting place.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: I also don’t believe that the film will take away the clubs magical allure. We only selected a few of the people who go there.We don’t show the entire club or its whole history. The focus is on the people who go there and who are, let’s say, regular guests. There are still dozens of other stories.

I think everyone who goes there can discover their own story because what you experience at KitKat is very individual. There is no obligation to do anything. You can immerse yourself completely, but you can also remain a little more distant. Anything is possible, so there is still a great deal to discover.

It is also one of the best-known clubs in the world. Everyone creates a kind of legend around it and says, “I really want to go there.” The myth surrounding it is huge.

For people who have never seen anything like it before, that is, of course, also part of the film’s appeal.

Susanne Heuer: I generally believe in zero tolerance for intolerance. Especially in light of what has just happened, with the AfD somehow claiming to defend liberal Berlin and using that idea for its own purposes. Blue is not a colour of the rainbow. That has to be made clear. There is a freedom here that needs to be defended.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: It is very relevant. It is a place where people feel free. The political shift to the right that we are currently witnessing is trying to restrict freedom on every possible level. I genuinely see that as a danger, even for Berlin.

Susanne Heuer: That is where completely different worlds meet. I would say that a traditionally hedonistic mindset is not necessarily compatible with the sex-positive mindset of someone from Gen Z. There is a completely different awareness of consent.

I’m a millennial. I wasn’t socialised with the idea that “no means no”, but of course, I believe that only “yes means yes”. I would say that this is genuinely a new development.

There are significant differences, and every generation has its own challenges. The world is always changing in waves. It moves forwards and backwards. Perhaps we are experiencing another neo-conservative backlash right now. I hope it moves in the other direction again.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: I don’t really see that, although I may also be the wrong person to ask. From what I have experienced at KitKat, you see people between the ages of 18 and 80. I find that very positive. There is no age discrimination at KitKat, and I find that really interesting.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: You would actually have to ask Philipp because I wasn’t there during the filming. To be honest, I only ever saw these decisions reflected in the finished material. There were protagonists who no longer appear in the film at all. Maybe you know more about that Susanne?

Susanne Heuer: There were definitely people who were filmed and would have liked to be part of the film, but we later decided that we didn’t want to give them that space.

For me, one important topic was how men behave, especially men in positions of power. I think that is absolutely worth examining in a film like this, but not by including someone like that as a protagonist. By doing so, you would simply reproduce the problem and give that person even more space.

It has now been resolved in such a way that Hottie and her friend, two protagonists, for example, actively address the subject. They shared a lot of stories, and that is how the issue is now explored in the film.

You don’t always have to point the camera at everything and show it explicitly. We’re not making Big Brother or anything like that. Those formats also existed in the 2000s, when everything was driven by a desire for scandal. That isn’t what this film is about, and it was definitely never supposed to be that way.

Susanne Heuer: I think Philipp began actively approaching people in the club whom he found interesting. But there were also people we already knew. Hottie, for example, is well known within the scene, and you know that this is someone who represents KitKat to a certain extent.

News that someone is making a film about the club spreads quickly within the scene. It starts to make waves, and then you have to say no to many people who might primarily want to present themselves in a film. Someone who actively wants to appear in a documentary isn’t necessarily the person you need.

Often, the most interesting people are the ones who say, “Oh, I don’t know. Am I important enough?” Do you know what I mean?

Cordula Kablitz-Post: I think I see that a little differently. From my many years of working on documentaries, I have noticed that when people are unsure at the beginning, it usually doesn’t work out very well. The most convincing protagonists are often the ones who commit from the outset and say, “I’m in. I want to do this.”

You are about to go on a difficult and lengthy journey together. Sometimes it becomes so challenging that people eventually become frightened by their own initial courage. If they aren’t completely certain from the beginning that they want to do it, the process can become quite exhausting. That is often where problems arise.

You also have to remember how much can happen in someone’s life over time. Saying yes in early 2020 doesn’t necessarily mean that you will still say yes in 2026. Something entirely different may have become important in your life by then, and you might no longer want anything to do with the film.

Susanne Heuer: For a short time, Philipp wanted to appear in the film himself. But I think that particular story was already represented by some of the other protagonists. Vicky and Marvin were added later, I believe, and I think they captured it very well. I really liked that.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: Yes, there was one person, but I don’t want to name them because they are no longer part of the film. 

And as Susanne already said, in the end, Philipp no longer wanted to appear in the film himself. That particular story was very personal, and eventually he didn’t want to tell it anymore.

Cordula Kablitz-Post: Tolerance, above all. I hope that people will look at everyone who appears in the film and think, “Oh, look, I didn’t know that.”

The pups, for example. I found them really fascinating. They have their own ways of interacting with one another. I didn’t know the pupscene before, and I found the people very likeable and interesting.

We would never have gained access to that world ourselves. Through the film, Philipp made it possible for us to connect with these people. I found it incredibly interesting to discover what happens behind the scenes, why people do it and what it means to them.

Susanne Heuer: Yes, tolerance, of course. And perhaps a little more empathy.

The ultimate hope would be to create a sense of community: to recognise that there are so many different people within club culture and that they can all feel connected as one.

Particularly within the left-wing scene, there is often a tendency to divide into even smaller groups, while others find it easier to agree on whom and what they support.

But there is something ritualistic about thousands of people moving to the same music in the same place. Perhaps, for a moment, they come into harmony with one another. I think that is also something festivals always try to achieve. Music connects people.

Although it may also be part of the utopian promise of the club, when you immerse yourself in it together, you feel a lasting sense of connection.

KitKat, Kinks of Berlin is playing in cinemas across Germany now.