Zappelphilipp (2012)

Over the course of the third year of school, Hannah Winter, a teacher who lives alone, gets a new pupil: nine-year-old Fabian Haas. It quickly becomes clear that the boy is very lively. Some of his classmates are puzzled, while others are delighted. In time, however, it also becomes clear that his activities make it impossible to hold lessons in the usual way. The first parents start asking questions and complain that Fabian is disrupting class. Hannah refuses to believe this and sees Fabian as an exceptional boy who needs a great deal of affection, but no medication. She seeks contact with Fabian’s mother, Miriam Haas, who is expecting a child with her new partner. But even there Hannah is unable to get any precise information about why Fabian is so active. Hannah now also spends a lot of time with Fabian outside school, which the parents and the school administration both find incomprehensible. Some parents believe Fabian has attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and should be treated with medication. They believe this is the only way to make orderly lessons possible. Fabian, meanwhile, is overwhelmed and finds support in a music group. The situation escalates when another teacher slaps Fabian. At a parents’ evening convened specifically for this purpose, where the teacher is supposed to apologize in front of the parents, Fabian’s mother is urged to take her son to a doctor. Miriam is initially undecided, but after another argument with her partner, she takes Fabian to a psychologist. Hannah has to realize that her fellow teachers, too, are gradually coming to favor treatment for Fabian. The situation escalates further when Fabian injures a female classmate with a stone. Miriam suffers pain in her lower abdomen and is taken to hospital by her partner. Fabian seeks refuge with Hannah, and the two go on an outing. However, Hannah realizes that Fabian has led her to his biological father, Andreas. He shows little interest in the boy, so they drive back home. There they meet Fabian’s mother, who strongly reproaches Hannah for going away alone with her son. Hannah gets signed off sick for several weeks and learns, during a visit from a fellow teacher, that Fabian, who is now receiving medication after all, is making great progress. In the final scene, Fabian is shown taking part in class. It remains unclear to the end whether he really has ADHD. The film is based on Thom Hartmann’s ADD/ADHD hypothesis, according to which ADD/ADHD is the expression of an anthropological variant (“hunters”) that is hardly needed in today’s society, a society of “gatherers.”