Ketamine-Era Souvenirs: New Film Follows Cigarettes’ Journey From Pocket to Pavement

On Saturday evening, around 9:30 p.m., the premiere of Pocket to Pavement began at Kiezkino Atlas, Müllerstraße 180, seating filled with people who smelled faintly of riverbank smoke and oat milk. The film — directed by Leyla Arslan, 34, and shot over eight months in and around the east-side open-air party venue near Hauptstraße — follows dozens of cigarettes as if they were noir protagonists: pulled from pockets, flicked to the floor, pocketed again, and finally, stepped on.

"We wanted to follow the thing everyone ignores," Arslan said after the screening. "Cigarettes carry sweat, secrets, and receipts. They witness the door policy, the after-hours, the arguments about belonging." The film uses close micro-cinematography and street interviews to make a forensic biography of butts that travel from pockets in leather jackets to the muddy grass beside the dancefloor.

What began as an aesthetic project, the documentary claims, exposed a small criminal circuit. According to Detective Anna Berger, 42, of Wedding Polizeiwache, officers opened an inquiry in November after vendors on Müllerstraße 128 reported bundles of discarded cigarettes resurfacing in second-hand bins and on market stalls.

"It’s petty theft plus public-health negligence," Berger said. "People pick used cigarettes, rewrap them, and sell them as ‘authentic Friday night’ souvenirs for as much as €25 a piece." The detective called the practice "biohazard opportunism" and said charges could include theft and unsanitary distribution.

Mehmet Yildirim, 56, who runs Altındağ Späti at Müllerstraße 132, saw the market change. "A Turkish family sold packs for years; now some artists sell a single butt like it's a relic," he said, shaking his head. "They want the dirt but not the consequence."

Arslan's film frames the trade as a small capitalist trick: nostalgia repackaged for newcomers who can afford a novelty priced like a gallery postcard. The final shot — a cigarette rolling uphill as a crowd pushes past — nods to Camus's essay: an absurd, exhausted object persistently returned to the same low orbit.

Not everyone laughed. In the lobby, a man in new hiking boots argued the buyers were preserving culture; a woman next to him, a long-term resident, called it gentrification's soft porn: consumable grit. The filmmaker says the point is blunt: "We fetishize ruin, then sell it back to ourselves." It’s hard to swallow.

Pocket to Pavement screens again at Kiezkino Atlas this week; tickets are €8. A police spokesperson said investigations continue, and local Spätis report increased foot traffic from collectors seeking a piece of the night.