World Premiere at Berlinale Special Gala 2023

Berlin, Neukölln: Gropiusstadt is a large housing estate that has a lot to offer. Lukas, Julius, Gino and Sanchez experience an initially extremely hot, dreary summer here, which soon turns into an adventure holiday with plenty of stress. Felix Lobrecht’s much-praised autobiographical debut novel was dedicated to them and the estate: social hardship, stark milieu language, told with wit, passion and poetry.

David Wnendt, Germany’s director of more sensitive material ( Kriegerin , Feuchtgebiete ), wrote the screenplay together with the author and turns it into a fast-paced, entertaining film with plenty of situational comedy. Violence, brutality, Araba-boxing-son-of-a-bitch-I-swear-I’ll-fuck-your-face and more are omnipresent, because there is no escaping drugs, gang wars and familial abysses here, and language is the purest field of experimentation for posing and crossing boundaries anyway.

The boys don’t even have enough money for the swimming pool, their mountain of debt is growing, a theft goes wrong – the others only notice quite late that one of them almost dies in the process. Everyday teenage life in the suburbs, this is Berlin, too.