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Tod den Hippies!! Es lebe der Punk! (2015)

94 min · Drama, Tragicomedy

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Directors

Oskar Roehler

Cast

Tom Schilling, Wilson Gonzalez Ochsenknecht, Emilia Schüle, Frederick Lau, Hannelore Hoger, Samuel Finzi, Alexander Scheer, Marc Hosemann, Anna-Maria Hirsch, Sonja Bertram, Anna Amalie Blomeyer, David Bredin, Rolf Zacher, Luisa Wietzorek

A disillusioned teenager leaves his West German home for West Berlin, hoping to find excitement in punk life.

The story

In the early 1980s, student Robert Rother lives in a West German city, where he and his classmate Gries can’t stand the hippies at school. After Gries is expelled, Robert grows tired of his diligent student-teacher girlfriend and takes his friend Schwarz’s advice to head to West Berlin, adopting a punk look in search of excitement. There, Robert looks for work at Schwarz’s nightclub and meets dancer Sanja. He soon follows Schwarz to a punk bar, drawn into the city’s punk scene as he tries to find his place away from home.

Full plot (contains spoilers)

In the early 1980s, teenage student Robert Rother lives in a West German city (judging by the dialect spoken by several characters, it is presumably in southern Germany, more specifically Franconia). One of his classmates is Gries, an openly gay Nazi punk. At school, Gries amuses himself by secretly dropping several highly potent pills into his long-haired teacher’s drinking glass before class, drugging him, and then cutting his hair. Afterwards, Robert and Gries cause chaos in the classroom. The principal expels Gries from school for this. Robert and Gries can’t stand the many hippies hanging around at school. Robert’s girlfriend is a diligent student teacher. Disgusted by her primness, he takes his friend Schwarz’s advice and heads to West Berlin, now sporting a punk mohawk and leather coat, hoping for excitement. He leaves behind his single mother, whom Robert’s uncle wants to murder in order to swindle her out of her inheritance. Once in West Berlin, Robert goes to the nightclub run by Schwarz to look for work. He takes a job wiping the sperm of customers who masturbate at a peep show off the windows. There he meets the dancer Sanja. Before long, he follows Schwarz to a punk bar, also to take drugs. In West Berlin, Robert visits his father Klaus, who lives alone and keeps a six-figure sum of cash in his apartment. A few days later, Robert and Schwarz steal the money, hoping to make a career as drug dealers. They narrowly escape being shot by Klaus. By chance, Robert runs into Gries again in Berlin, where he earns a living as a male street prostitute and leather gay. Robert spends some time with him, and they perform music together at the “Risiko,” a bar run by Blixa Bargeld. One day, the authorities discover that the money Robert stole from his father came from RAF funds, and thus learn of his father’s criminal past with the RAF. Klaus is consequently arrested and sent to prison. After Robert’s mother also turns up in Berlin and then travels to Munich, Robert and Sanja follow her there. They witness her first shoot her hated brother in the genitals and then kill herself with the gun. Back in Berlin, Robert is also arrested and ordered to perform civilian service in West Germany. After a traumatic incident involving a resident of a care home with a colostomy bag, he slashes his wrists and is then released from service. In the end, Robert and Schwarz meet again on a truck in the Egyptian desert.

Genres

Drama, Tragicomedy

Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.

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