OSDORF

A portrait of youngsters in Osdorfer Born, a Hamburg district with grave social problems and large immigrant population. With unemployment and petty crime all around them, the boys hardly stand a chance of staying on the straight and narrow. They protect themselves by aggressively identifying with their neighbourhood and acting like hardmen, keep their sensitivity carefully concealed. People respect machos, they think. A visit to real prisoners in a real jail is supposed to show them how fast they can wreck their lives. The film manages to get close to the boys and penetrate the facade of their indifference. Premiered in the “Perspektive Deutsches Kino” series at the 2007 Berlinale.