Leander Haußmann - Sonnenallee (1999)

A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong -east- side of the Sonnenallee (Sun Alley) in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, of the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and of the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.




A “mufta” is a multifunctional table, a “Minetta” is a radio, mopeds are called “Swallous” and “Asthmakraut Halle” -a special asthma medication- is the only recreational drug available. The Soviet Union is big brother, the rest of the world is the enemy of the people, and the Berlin Wall is actually a bulwark against fascists. This is the German Democratic Republic, the land where Michael lives. He wears bell-bottom’s and a home-printed rock & pop T-shirt. And the street he lives on wends most of its length through West-Berlin, with just its tail in the East.
The apartment is cramped, the neighbor works for the secret police, there’s an uncle from the West to smuggle in pantyhouse, and a West German passport which causes his mother to age before his very eyes. But Micha is focused his goal: doing whatever it takes to win the heart of the prettiest girl at school.
It all happened a very long time ago, but if Micha doesn’t tell the story now, we’ll never know what it was like, back then in the seventies, in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, at the hind end of Sonnenallee.




Former theater director Leander Hausmann sets out to prove that the children of the Berlin Wall had more on their mind than politics in this bittersweet coming-of-age tale, set about a decade before the wall was dismantled. Hausmann's teens live along "Sun Alley," a street split in two by a checkpoint between East and West Berlin, and they occasionally talk of starting a resistance movement. Their revolutionary dreams are quickly dashed, however, in favor of dreaming about the opposite sex. Easterners Micha (Alexander Scheer) and Mario (Alexander Beyer) spend their days listening to bootlegged Rolling Stones records and endlessly scheming ways to lose their virginity.




Meanwhile, Micha has to put up with his eccentric clan, including a mom (The Tin Drum's Katharina Thalbach) who's dreaming up disguises for escaping the country, a pop (Henry Huebchen) who bemoans the state of Eastern products, and a sis (Annika Kuhl) who throws herself at any available man in town. Nicknamed "The Eastie Boys," Sonnenallee certainly resonated with audiences in its homeland: Germans flocked to the film in record numbers, making it one of the country's most successful homegrown productions in years.





The film is based on the novel 'Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee' (At the Shorter End of Sonnenallee), written by Thomas Brussig after the production of the film and published in the same year. According to S. Fischer Verlag, there is not an English translation of the novel. The Sonnenallee is an actual street in Berlin that was intersected by the border between East and West during the time of the Berlin Wall, although it bears little resemblance to the film set.

Spanish subs translated by firpo and myself.




Un grupo de niños de la calle Sonnenallee de Berlín vive en plena frontera con la Alemania socialista. En Sonnenallee no sólo ellos intentan permanecer ajenos a los rigores militares y policiales a los que obliga esta separación entre las dos alemanias que vivieron de esta manera durante casi medio siglo. Policías y familiares hacen lo que pueden por aportar normalidad a una vida caracterizada por un fenómeno político que les es ajeno por su estupidez intrínseca.

Los subtítulos en español son obra de firpo y un servidor.

Script/Guión: Thomas Brussig, Leander Haußmann
Music/Música: Paul Lemp, Stephen Keusch
Cinematography/Fotografía: Peter-Joachim Krause
Cast/Reparto: Alexander Scheer, Alexander Beyer, Katharina Thalbach, Henry Hübchen, Detlev Buck, Teresa Weißbach