22/04/2025 - Based on a bestseller by Mithu Sanyal, the story centres on a doctoral student and blogger who discovers a shocking secret about her Postcolonial Theory professor

On 3 April, the first clapperboard slammed on Randa Chahoud's Identitti, based on a best-selling book of the same name by Cultural Studies scholar and author Mithu Sanyal. Production is scheduled to continue until 16 May in Cologne and Düsseldorf.

The story follows University of Düsseldorf PhD student and blogger Nivedita Anand (Amanda Babaei Vieira), who discovers that her idol, professor of Postcolonial and Race Theory Saraswati (Stephanie Eidt), is actually white and not a person of colour, as she claims to be. While her friend Olouchi Schneider (Zoe Magdalena) calls for the professor's reputation to be torn down, Nivedita must ask herself where she stands: is Saraswati's stance actually quietly revolutionary, or is she just a fraud? Kali (Sabrina Setlur), a Hindu goddess of death and rebirth, also jumps in to play a role in the scandal that emerges.

The title is a reference to the name of the protagonist's online blogging persona. The supporting cast includes Saba Lou Khan, Anne Müller, Mohamed Kanj Khamis, Lotte Becker, Alexandra Finder, Murali Perumal and others. Chahoud is a Berlin-born Syrian-German filmmaker best known for her work on the successful Amazon Prime series Deutschland 89, for which she directed all eight episodes. 

Friederike Jehn penned the script adaptation of Sanyal's book, which was nominated for the 2021 German Book Prize. Constanza Macars is attached to choreograph, and Burak Özdemir will create the film's soundtrack. Andrew Bird, a frequent Fatih Akin collaborator and the editor of Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig [+see also:
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interview: Mohammad Rasoulof
film profile], will serve as the editor. 

The project is being produced by Razor Film Produktion GmbH with co-production by ZDF. Additional funding has been provided by the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, the German Federal Film Board (FFA), the Cultural Film Fund of the BKM, the German Film Fund (DFFF), the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, the MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein and Creative Europe. Alamode holds distribution rights to the movie in Germany and plans to release it in 2026.