Stadt als Beute (2005)

This three-part drama is about life in Berlin, particularly the lives of three theater actors—Marlon, Ohboy, and Lizzy—who rehearse scenes from the playwright René Pollesch’s play Stadt als Beute at a theater. The rehearsals are at the heart of the story. It is there that the protagonists meet, and they keep encountering one another until the play’s premiere. The personal development they undergo when they leave rehearsals and lose their way in Berlin’s urban life runs parallel to the development of the play. Each protagonist comes up against and overcomes their own limitations. Ohboy, who has absorbed the life of the big city and can adapt to its rhythm, avoids confronting real challenges in everyday life with striking ease. Marlon, by contrast, is new to the city and struggles with the rules of life in a metropolis, which are still unfamiliar to him. Lizzy is searching for fame and recognition, but at the same time longs for great love—until she is confronted in a nightclub with the dark side of reality, where sex and commercialism reign. The film culminates in the premiere of Stadt als Beute. Reality and fiction merge. We see how each of the three protagonists, in their own way, puts the development they have undergone to use in promoting the play.