Torpedo

Boom! In 2009, when Helene Hegemann presented her first film, only 43 minutes long, at festivals and then in the cinemas, she was a mere 16 years old. The film was otherwise exceptional as well: The plot jumps merrily about, botched takes are left in the film, and the theater where Helene Hegemann grew up, the Berlin Volksbühne, is integrated in the film. The story: Mia (Alice Dwyer) is 15, “personality disordered,” traumatized and angry, looking for connection, the meaning of life and a new mother, because hers has died. Between cherry juice spritzers in Prenzlauer Berg, theater rehearsals and the desire for closeness, Hegemann sets off one cinematic firecracker after the next as her Mia drifts breathlessly through Berlin’s subculture. Lars Eidinger, Caroline Peters, Jule Böwe, Mira Partecke and her father Carl Hegemann play their parts in this film, which is very unusual for German cinema, in a relaxed and extremely self-deprecating manner. The ‘wunderkind’ Helene Hegemann also became known to a wider public a year later with her intense novel Axolotl Roadkill and followed it up in 2017 with Axolotl Overkill, her first and so far last feature-length film, which premiered at the Sundance Festival. 

Image © Filmgalerie 451