GoetheKino|GoetheCine
Director: Andreas Dresen, colour, 117 min., 2013-2015
Just a few years previously, Dani, Rico, Paul and Mark had still been schoolchildren in the GDR, subject to ideological constraints, but also secure in their manageable daily lives. After German reunification, there no longer seem to be any rules. The friends enjoy their private anarchy, go out at night in Leipzig, speed through night-time streets in stolen cars drunk, take drugs, go on the rampage and enjoy their acts of vandalism. They open a disco, which fails after a year due to Nazi violence. Rico messes up his career as a boxer, Paul deals in pornography; Mark loses his life, Dani the love of his life. AS WE WERE DREAMING tells the story of a lost generation that unknowingly became the victim of reunification.
The beginning already reveals the end. Dani enters a dilapidated building, calls out into the dark for Mark; he’s just run away from a rehab clinic and doesn’t want to be seen in this state, even by his best friend. Dani is only supposed to roll over the bottle of beer he has brought for him. Mark won’t survive this situation for long – but the viewer only learns that in the final scenes. To start out with, the film flashes back to the last years of the GDR, when Dani, Mark, Rico and Paul were still schoolchildren in Leipzig, wore the red scarves of the Thälmann Pioneers and had to prepare themselves for an “emergency” – a bomb attack from the West. Later, they are warned about the “hooligan marches” – Leipzig’s Monday Demonstrations, which ultimately played a significant role in the collapse of East Germany.
Back
