TURK - GERMAN MOVIE CHAIN PULLS ANTI-AMERICAN FLICK

Germany's largest movie chain, CinemaxX, has pulled the hit Turkish film Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, following accusations that the film is anti-Semitic and anti-American. The film depicts American soldiers in Iraq as villains, with Billy Zane playing a sadistic U.S. officer and Gary Busey, a Jewish doctor who harvests the organs of Iraqi prisoners and sells them to clients in the West and in Israel. "The controversy surrounding this film has really heated up," CinemaxX spokesman Arne Schmidt told today's (Friday) Hollywood Reporter. "We didn't want to add oil to the fire, so we decided to pull the film." Earlier this week, Bavarian state premier Edmund Stoiber called on all German theater owners "to pull this racist and anti-Western hate film immediately." However, Anil Sahin, head of Maxximum, the film's distributor, told the trade publication. "This is being used as a political football to score points. I wonder if any of the politicians has [sic] actually seen the movie. It's just a fun, silly action flick -- Rambo told from the other side."


24/02/2006