Undoing Hegemonic Erasure: Afro-German Berlin in Armin Völckers’s Film Leroy (2007)

This article argues that racism alongside the verbal and physical neo-Nazi violence perpetrated in Leroy (2007) against the film’s eponymous teenaged Afro-German male lead pervade Berlin’s cinematic topography, thus pushing against the city’s self-stylization as a cosmopolitan “open city” that is tolerant towards its ethnic minorities. I assert that in questioning Berlin’s self-presentation, Leroy – a youth film, ethnic romantic comedy, and Berlin film – is ambiguous: while it disrupts some stereotypes about black masculinity, simultaneously it also uses ethnic tropes. Furthermore, I maintain that, visually, Berlin is constituted as a multivalent space that both supports and perturbs Afro-German identity, while through the use of hip hop the film creates a sonic Afro-German Berlin community. Finally, I show that the film’s satiric concluding image of Berlin as a utopian, post-racist cityscape calls attention to cinema’s role in employing the same racist tropes it aims to undo.