Preußisch Gangstar

A snapshot from the life of three youngsters in Buckow, a provincial Brandenburg town somewhere between Berlin and Frankfurt-on-Oder. The modest affluence provided for by their parents can scarcely contain the problems Tino, Oli and Nico grapple with in their day-to-day lives.

(Catalogue Saarbrücken, 2007)

PRUSSIAN GANGSTAR is a documentary-like fiction about three adolescents who enliven their drab existence in the idyllic Brandenburg village of Buckow with hip-hop music, parties, drugs and brawls.

Nico has dropped out of his training course and dreams of a career as a musician. Tino is struggling to get his general school certificate so that his mother won’t be disappointed. Oli wants to open up a club but his girlfriend would prefer them to move to the city. The problems the boys contend with often seem like the usual teenage angst. All the same, their preoccupations create an almost unbridgeable gulf between any spiritual values and ideals as well as the attitudes of their well-meaning parents. The film shows the three boys’ deliberately offhand manners, cites the slang they use, and presents the parents’ inability to communicate with their children. The viewer becomes a witness of the priorities according to which the generation depicted lives: the family is an inescapable state of affairs, friendship rules, love is often an image issue but occasionally, amongst all the insecurity and intoxication, something to do with fulfilment.

(Film pressbook)