Wild Heart

“Stay or Go?” asks Feine Sahne Fischfilet (“Fine Cream Fish Filet”), one of the most successful punk bands in Germany. Growing up in the former GDR, their frontman Jan “Monchi” Gorkow asked himself the same question. On the cusp of young adulthood with an uncertain future after German reunification, Monchi found himself expressing his anger through violent soccer fanaticism and sexist lyrics. Only when he realized that neo-Nazis were frequenting his shows did Monchi decide to make a radical turn, pulling his life together and mobilizing his special brand of musical rage to fight the right.

As much a portrait of a contemporary punk icon as a frank look at the rise of racist extremism in 2000s Germany, Wild Heart combines Super 8 home videos, interviews, and concert footage to explore the ideology and tactics that got Monchi and his bandmates labeled “left-wing extremists” by their state’s government. His political journey offers an affirmative interpretation of the punk ethos, one that not only rejects all “isms,” but offers a brash, loud, and compassionate vision of the future in their place.