Freizeit oder: das gegenteil von nichtstun

“My free time would be the opposite of doing nothing,” writes Ronald M. Schernikau in his Kleinstadtnovelle. Schernikau was a writer, a communist, a poof, and can be seen in a talk show appearance at the beginning of Caroline Pitzen’s debut film. His words serve as a thread for this film, for moments in which five young Berliners reflect and talk in front of the camera about today: about politics, about gender relations, about injustices, about everyday life, about struggles, about their lives, ultimately about “what to do.” A long-term project, a discursive production with people who are not actors in a film that is not a documentary, guided by Caroline Pitzen who studied film with Thomas Arslan at the University of the Arts in Berlin. There is a great tenderness in the images and in the moments in which the camera does not seem to be present, in which youths converse, flounder, make plans, explore utopias, seem to be unconcerned with the ballast of adulthood and inspired by the freedom of not-being-quite-grown-up. An almost anachronistic snapshot of young people in whose summer so much still seems possible in a city where less and less seems possible: a condition to which there is an alternative.  

Image © OKNO, Markus Koob