‘Identitti’ review: A university student wrestles with identity issues in uneven German drama | Reviews

Dir: Randa Chahoud. Germany. 2026. 103mins

German author Mithu Sanyal’s 2021 bestseller Identitti is brought to the screen as a zesty, zeitgeisty reckoning with cultural appropriation, identity politics and cancel culture. The blend of political commentary and comic fantasy can be jarring and overcooked but, when the more conventional elements dominate, it develops into a sweetly provocative tale of self-empowerment in a time of social tumult. The success of the novel and the presence of popular German rapper Sabrina Setlur should elevate the film’s homeground profile when it is released in Germany in November following its premiere at Munich Film Festival.

Exuberant comic moments tend to interrupt the film’s flow

Set in 2019 at a University in Dusseldorf, Identitti takes some of its energy and confidence from Stephanie Eidt’s commanding performance as Saraswati, an uncompromising Indian professor of postcolonial studies. Dressed in striking white saris to set off her hazelnut eyes, she sweeps through the halls, oozing authority. White students are banished from her class and those who remain are advised to smarten up their attitudes about race and to decolonize their souls.

Saraswati is idolised by students Oluchi (Zoe Magdalena) and her friend Nivedita (Amanda Babaei Vieira), who runs a podcast called ‘Identitti’. The daughter of a Polish mother and an Indian father, Nivedita has always felt like an outsider and hangs on Saraswati’s every word about identity, entitlement and oppression. When Saraswati embarks on a trip, Nivedita is given the keys to her professor’s apartment and asked to water the plants. Whilst there, Nivedita makes a rather convenient discovery that exposes Saraswati as a imitation who has completely constructed the identity she presents to the world. Facing a dilemma over whether to make this information public is the first step on Nivedita’s journey to self empowerment.

On the surface, Identitti has a superficial resemblance to such cancel culture dramas as Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt (2025) – also set in 2019 – as a college campus is rocked by revelations about a respected academic. Yet Randa Chahoud, a prolific director of televisions series like The Interpreter Of Silence (2023) and Deutschland 89 (2020), challenges our expectations of how such a tale might unfold by including dance, fantasy and flashbacks.

Argentine choreographer Constanza Macras, who worked on The Favourite (2018) and Poor Things (2023), injects elements of contemporary dance in the collective moments of the campus students, and there is a solo dance number for Saraswati’s dentist brother (Niels Bormann). There is also a forceful fantasy thread throughout, as Nivedita gains a fairy godmother in the shape of the goddess Kali, played by rapper Sabrina Setlur in Vanessa Williams diva mode. Dressed in purple and sporting dagger like nails, she offers words of wisdom and encouragement that inspire Nivedita to become a “Mixed Race Wonder Woman”.

The exuberant comic moments tend to interrupt the film’s flow and threaten to tip the film towards the lighter come of age mode of something like Coky Giedroyic’s How To Build A Girl (2019). The dilemmas facing Nivedita and her ability to navigate the culture wars are sufficiently engaging without these cartoonish distractions.

Previously seen in Maya & Samar (2025), Vierira makes an appealing central figure. She captures the curiosity, outrage and hard-won understanding of her character, bringing a lithe touch to the ponderous issues that press down on Nivedita. Identitti may flirt with more flashy elements, but in the end it works best as a tale of a adolescent woman claiming her own voice.