Logline:
Sunny doesn't let anyone tell her what to do. Despite resistance and disappointments, she follows her dream of making it in a career as a singer. The tragicomic music drama by DEFA greats Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase became a cult film and box-office hit.

Short text:
In East Berlin at the end of the 1970s, Sunny dreams of becoming a star with her music and performing on the big stages. To achieve this, she has given up her job as a factory worker and is now touring with her band through the staid backwaters. But her artistic ambitions are not all that meet with little success; her search for love and personal happiness also leads to disappointment time and again. But despite all her professional and personal setbacks, Sunny does not let herself be kept from following her dreams.
SOLO SUNNY is one of the great DEFA classics. Based on the real-life story of the singer Sanije Torka, it paints the picture of a woman who refuses to be browbeaten: brash, unadorned, authentic. The last film by GDR star director Konrad Wolf - who gave his name to Germany's oldest film school in Potsdam-Babelsberg - based on a script by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, allowed itself subversion and blunt social criticism in its unruly protagonist. After Renate Krößner was awarded the Silver Bear at the 1980 Berlinale and the film also won the FIPRESCI Critics' Prize, SOLO SUNNY quickly became a box-office hit. The success was due not least to the soundtrack, which was a collaboration between musician and composer Günther Fischer and jazz singer Regine Dobberschütz, who interpreted all of Sunny's titles.

(31.05.2023)

She has given up her job in the factory. Now, Ingrid Sommer, also known as “Sunny”, hovers between an amateur and professional existence as a singer. She tours the province with the band “Tornados”, constantly hoping for a big, successful solo gig. Sunny might be a little too naive to launch a career quickly. She’s certainly too honest, and perhaps too demanding in a very human way. In her run-down courtyard flat in Prenzlauer Berg, at the time an area that was light years away from the uptown district it is today, she has problems with an old neighbour; after a complaint, Sunny has to explain her change of lifestyle to the People's Police. From time to time she brings a guy home and throws him out the next morning. “Breakfast is not included”, she says, “and neither is discussion!” Sunny wants to make her own choices and won't let herself be used. Not by saxophonist Norbert, who thinks she simply needs to be approached with the necessary authority, nor taxi driver Harry, with his moving but pathetic persistence. Sunny falls for Ralph, the egocentric philosophy graduate, and realises that she's replaceable: She gets thrown out of the band because she turns out to be too difficult. When she rushes to Ralph for help, he has someone else in his bed. Sunny attempts to commit suicide, temporarily returns to the factory and in the end introduces herself to a new, young and fresh band. While the camera pans over the rooftops of the backyards of Prenzlauer Berg, you hear the music of the youths fade away into the sounds of Sunny's solo number, for which Ralph wrote the English lyrics.

To begin with, Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase's austereness is exciting. There is no character that approximates the clichés of socialist big-screen heroes, just people full of contradictions searching hard for their personal happiness. Ralph, with his somewhat ridiculous degree, listens to Indian classical music and retreats into his own world to contemplate about death. Like Sunny, he seems to be an individual looking for happiness, and not someone who might find it within the doctrines of socialism. He is more of an outsider, who has chosen to refrain from being directly useful to society. Even taxi driver Harry, who says he can't be stupid considering the amount of money he makes, really doesn't appear to be stupid after his failed attempt at courting Sunny. The characters' inconsistencies lessen the further they are from the focus of the film, such as the clumsy attempt of one of Sunny's colleagues at demonstrating her vocal skills. For a moment, you fear that this character might be turned into a laughing stock for the viewers, but her amateur singing ends with the words “I want to live!”. Her stammering longing doesn't trigger laughter, but a kind of emotion.

SOLO SUNNY seems like a radical fresh start in the work of Konrad Wolf. “After MAMA, I'M ALIVE, young people accepted the film, but openly said: Listen, you guys with your generational problems! I know you mean it and it does concern us, but if you don't have the courage and honesty to make a film about our current problems, then what you have to say about the past is also untrustworthy to us. You can't just shrug that off! The people who find themselves in situations where they have to prove themselves or make a decision, are of principle importance in the film. People who don't think the world is so simple and whose world suddenly falls apart.”
(Konrad Wolf)

Solo Sunny is a clever, unruly film that speaks out against stale attitudes and judging people on the basis of their immediate usefulness. The numerous images of narrow spaces and crumbling facades underline this. Wolf and Kohlhaase argue that society in the GDR should not only accept different lifestyles, but suggest that it also in fact needs these unusual characters, or, politically formulated, the dissidents. Hardly any other DEFA film was able to express so clearly how much happiness depends on self-fulfilment, the road to which cannot be a single one constructed by the state, but many roads that are rarely straight. Thus, in the end, SOLO SUNNY sparks courage and confidence, despite the painful undertones at times.

(2016)

Production Period

1978-1980

Production Year

1980

color

color

Aspect Ratio

1:1,66

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Feature Film

Genre

Drama

Topic

Love, Relationship / Family, Sexuality, GDR, Film History, Equal Rights / Emancipation, Music

Available Media

Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Digital Film

Original Version

German (de)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Hebrew (he), Indonesisch (id)

DVD

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Hebrew (he), Indonesisch (id)

Digital Film

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Hebrew (he), Indonesisch (id)