By Fatih Akin
Presented as part of the Goethe-Kino
Unpopular at school, ignored by the girl he adores, with a mother who drinks and a father who cheats on her, fourteen-year-old Maik Klingenberg regards life with little optimism. Enters Tschick, his German-Russian classmate, an outsider just like himself, yet less phased by the fact. When school breaks for the summer, Maik is little excited as he has nothing to look forward to, but then Tschick shows up on Maik’s doorstep with a “borrowed” blue Lada. Walachia, where Tschick’s grandfather lives, is his destination, and so Maik takes off with him on a trip of adventures and new encounters crisscrossing the wild backwaters of provincial East-Germany.
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Photo: © Tschick!
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Photo: © Tschick!
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Photo: © Tschick!
It is always a challenge to bring a book to the screen, especially one that is dearly loved by so many readers. Since its publication in autumn 2010
Tschick! (
Why We Took the Car, Scholastic/Levine ) has sold more than two million copies in Germany, a success that its author,
Wolfgang Herrndorf, could only witness for a relatively short period. Suffering from a cancerous brain tumour he took his own life in 2013 aged 48, having documented his experience of working and dying in a blog called
Arbeit und Struktur (
Work and Structure) up to that moment.
A fan of the book, director
Fatih Akin (
In July,
Head On,
The Edge of Heaven), who usually only works from his own script, came late to the
Tschick! film project after the original director had dropped out. Together with the author
Lars Hubrich, who was a friend of Herrndorf, and director
Hark Bohm he re-wrote the screenplay. One of the founding-members of the New Ge
rman Cinema distributer 'Filmverlag der Autoren', Bohm became well known in the 1970s for such films as
Tschetan, der Indianerjunge (1972), Nordsee ist Mordsee (1975/76) or Moritz, Dear Moritz (
Moritz, lieber Mortiz, 1978), films that took their young protagonists and audiences seriously. The new script for
Tschick! does not slavishly stick to every scene in the book, and the resulting film has managed to stay true to novel's character.
Germany 2016, colour, DCP, ca. 90 mins. German with English subtitles.
Director: Fatih Akin, Screenplay: Lars Hubrich, Fatih Akin and Hark Bohm. Based on Wolfgang Herrndorf’s novel.
With Tristan Gobel, Anand Batbileg, Nicole Mercedes Muller, Anja Schneider, Aniya Wendel, Uwe Bohm, Udo Samel.
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