Perspective section – Berlinale: The search for meaning and belonging

The condition of the East has now become a fixed topos in the German discourse landscape. The questions “How is he, the East German?” And above all “Why Is he like that?! ”A number of social scientists, writers and filmmakers are busy. At the latest since Dirk Oschmann’s advertisement via the east as a construct of West German ignorance, the debate has started again. The first decade after reunification, in which the roots are generally located for the strengthening right -wing radicalism in the “new countries” is particularly important. At that time, this radicalization found its expression in excess violations, which are now subsumed under the term “baseball bat year”.

“Beating his fist into the world” based on the novel by Lukas Rietzschel begins in 2006 and plays in the Eastern Saxon province. Here the brothers Tobi (9) and Philipp (12) grow up in an environment characterized by decline and the decay of social structures. The parents build a house like you do in the country. But they actually cannot afford it, and soon the cracks in the middle class beams will appear. The father, a former locomotive builder in a large combination, is hanging from a precarious job to the next and finally becomes unemployed, the mother is mostly absent as a nurse, the children on their own. In their free time, they often roam the ruins that have remained from the former workplaces of their parents.

The film thus describes the leading time in which the generation of those born around or shortly after the turn describes. The traumatic consequences of devaluation of the work biographies of the parents and the breaking away of social bonds have to suggest them in particular. The fact that everyone is only the next seems to be a fact, but not really internalized yet. Beyond the still powerful socialist equality requirement, you now live in a class society in which income, origin and social background decide on life paths.

After the ideological superstructure of the GDR, the new society cannot make a meaning that goes beyond the accumulation of material goods. Bad luck if you cannot afford these goods because of the precarious employment relationships. “The Poles took the work away from my father,” is an obvious attempt at explanation for the misery for Tobi, and the teachers at school can or do not want to oppose anything. The first swastika in the school yard is still ashamed, but the right background noise has long been omnipresent.

The house, however, remains half -finished, the father, who is really called “Dad” here, is stunned by his supposed failure with alcohol and the neighbor. The speechlessness of the parents and the absence of the father, which the mother, who has to keep things up, cannot compensate, the film outlines as a key moments on the way to the young nazi. In order to escape the emotional emptiness and provincial wasteland, only the older boys who promise adventures remain but mean violence against refugees. Leave alone with himself and looking for meaning and belonging, Philipp joins them, even if he has to cross borders.

“Beating into the world with a fist” is part of the legion of Eastern explanatory attempts-and is still different and special. This is due to the incredible sense of the director Constanze Klue for moods and pitches born in East Berlin in 1985, with which she precisely recorded and described the attitude to life in the “new countries” in the nineties. Hard to believe that it is a debut film that is therefore running in the new Berlinale section “Perspective” for the same first films.

The empathetic figure and milieu drawing and the congenial line-up to the supporting roles give the film unconditional credibility without the director having to apply too thick. Instead, the camera (Florian Brückner) approaches the protagonists and researches their faces in which the fate of an entire generation is reflected. The film does not want to excuse anything, as a dense description of a fragile society, he remains in the memory for a long time.

“Skip into the world with a fist”, Germany 2025. Director: Constanze Klue. 110 min.
February 18, 9:30 p.m., Cubix; February 20, 3:30 p.m., Colosseum; February 21, 2:45 p.m., Cubix