General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Chiko

Chiko is a 2008 German gangster drama directed and written by Özgür Yildirim, his feature film debut, about a young Turkish German man in Hamburg who rises in the drug trade and destroys his closest friendship in the process. It premiered in the Panorama Special section of the 58th Berlin International Film Festival on 9 February 2008 and opened in German cinemas on 17 April 2008.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Özgür Yildirim, born 1979 in Hamburg; feature debut²
Production	Corazón International with Norddeutscher Rundfunk; producers Fatih Akin, Klaus Maeck, and Andreas Thiel²
Release	World premiere 9 February 2008, Berlinale Panorama Special; German theatrical release 17 April 2008¹
Cast	Denis Moschitto (Chiko), Volkan Özcan (Tibet), Moritz Bleibtreu (Brownie), Fahri Yardım (Curly), Reyhan Şahin (Meryem)²
Format	92 minutes, 35 mm, 1:1.85, color; FSK 16¹
Awards	German Film Award 2009 for Best Screenplay and Best Editing; Nuremberg Turkey-Germany festival Best Actor and Special Jury Prize³
Reception	IMDb 6.8/10 from about 3,900 votes; Rotten Tomatoes 63% from 19 reviews⁴^•⁵

Spoilers

Plot

Chiko (Denis Moschitto) and his friend Tibet (Volkan Özcan) live in a Hamburg suburban ghetto and believe the drug business is their route to money, power, and respect. To get noticed, they beat up a small dealer and force him to name his supplier, Scholle (Philipp Baltus), then intimidate Scholle in his own apartment so that word reaches the local drug king.⁶

That king is Brownie (Moritz Bleibtreu), a music producer who fronts as a prosperous family man while running the neighborhood drug trade. Impressed by Chiko's self-confidence, Brownie gives him a test: distribute ten kilos of grass in ten days, sold only from an apartment Brownie provides, never on the street. The business runs smoothly at first, and Chiko moves closer to the white Mercedes coupe and the status he dreams of.⁶

The friendship breaks over Tibet. He skims small amounts of Brownie's drugs to sell for his own profit, partly to pay for treatment for his mother, who needs a new kidney and depends on dialysis that Tibet accompanies her to.⁷ Brownie finds out and punishes him brutally, and Chiko is forced to choose between loyalty to his friend and his own advancement in the drug business.⁸ After a failed attack on Brownie, Chiko faces a lethal decision.⁹

Production

Origins. Yildirim grew up in Hamburg-Dulsberg, which he described as a rough neighborhood in the 1990s where he gathered ideas by observing; he also grew up on Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese films. He said he wanted to make a gangster film partly because the genre is rare in Germany, and that the subject had not been treated from this angle in German cinema before.¹⁰ In his own words, "CHIKO is my 'Scarface' set in a Hamburg suburban ghetto," and he added that no one in Germany had recently made a real, honest, open film about the drug scene.¹¹ The closing credits thank Brian De Palma's Scarface, and the German Film and Media Rating Board noted parallels to that film as well as to Kurz und schmerzlos and La Haine, while judging Chiko an independent work.⁷

Making. The film was shot from 27 February to 16 April 2007 in Hamburg and Hannover, with some scenes on a motorway section near Bremen, on 35 mm in a 1:1.85 format.¹^•¹² Yildirim studied film at the Hamburg Media School between 2002 and 2004 after publishing a short-story collection at age 14; his earlier shorts include Hartes Blut (1998) and Alim Market (2004).² Fatih Akin, whose company Corazón International also produced Takva – Gottesfurcht (2006), produced the film with Klaus Maeck and Andreas Thiel, in co-production with Norddeutscher Rundfunk.¹³^•² Matthias Bolliger was the cinematographer, Sebastian Thümler the editor, and Darko Krezic composed the music.² Falcom Media handled German distribution; The Match Factory handled world sales.¹^•⁶

Casting. Reyhan Şahin, a trained sociologist known as the rap artist Lady Bitch Ray, made her acting debut as the prostitute Meryem.¹³ Lilay Huser played Tibet's mother.²

Reception

The Berlinale premiere drew a divided response, with the depiction of violence making some viewers uncomfortable; the Programmkino review judged the film unambiguous on that point.¹⁴ Its release coincided with a German political dispute over violence among young men with immigrant backgrounds, which cinema.de noted made the film's arrival pointed, though the magazine argued it should be read as a genre film rather than a contribution to that debate.¹⁵

Critical verdicts varied. The German Film and Media Rating Board awarded the Prädikat "wertvoll" (valuable), calling it a craftsmanlike gangster film with outstanding, authentic performers and a style-confident rise-and-fall story.⁷ Der Spiegel praised its forceful direction and vivid characters.¹⁴ FILMSTARTS rated it 2.0 of 5, "lauw" (lukewarm), despite the pre-release praise.⁸ Screen found the drama mechanically generic but noted the near-total absence of German police or German characters as an implicit critique of official indifference to the immigrant neighborhood's drug wars.¹⁶ On IMDb the film holds 6.8/10 from about 3,900 votes; the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer stood at 63 percent from 19 reviews.⁴^•⁵ Against an estimated budget of €1,500,000, it grossed $831,517 worldwide.⁴

Awards

At the 2009 German Film Awards (Deutscher Filmpreis), Chiko won the Film Award in Gold for Best Screenplay (Özgür Yildirim) and Best Editing (Sebastian Thümler), and was nominated for Outstanding Feature Film and for Denis Moschitto's lead performance.³ At the Nuremberg Film Festival Turkey-Germany in 2008, Moschitto won Best Actor and Volkan Özcan won the Special Jury Prize.³ Matthias Bolliger was nominated for the German Camera Award in 2008.³

Place in Turkish German cinema

Chiko belongs to a line of Turkish German gangster and drug films that includes Fatih Akin's Kurz und schmerzlos (1998), Lars Becker's Kanak Attack (2000), and Thomas Arslan's Dealer (1999), a trend that continued in post-2000 productions such as Knallhart (2006), Wut (2007), and Chiko itself.¹⁷ Akin, born 1973 in Hamburg to Turkish immigrant parents, had debuted with the immigrant gangster film Kurz und schmerzlos in 1998 and won the Golden Bear for Gegen die Wand in 2004; through Corazón International he supported younger directors with related concerns, Chiko among them.¹³

The film reached home video on 12 January 2009 and had its German television premiere on 25 July 2011 on Das Erste.⁹ A UK theatrical release followed on 14 August 2009.⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 2005–2009 films › Released 2008 to 2009

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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