Mein Stern, Valeska Grisebach, Alemania-Germany, 2001, 65', DCP OV with Spanish subtitles
Nicole is fourteen years old and she is sure that something important is going to happen in her life very soon. This is when she meets Christopher, a boy of her own age who is one of the neighbourhood’s celebrities. It is when their love story begins, their relationship as partners, the way they have seen older people do it. Nicole’s mother works on the night shift, so her apartment is empty and becomes the perfect setting for this game in which Nicole and Christopher play at being older, at being “husband and wife”. They try to imitate what they have observed adults doing, as if everything consisted in imitating gestures and actions. But things are not so simple. Or are they? While they build a world in which everything is possible, while they stroll around like film stars, they begin to glimpse the promise of an adult life in the distance: banks, responsibilities, fears. Meanwhile, time passes and it seems that decisions have to be made.
“When I started researching with teenagers and young people, I was fascinated by the way youth copied the roles of couples, the constructed idea of love, how they tried to be adults by imitating the game that adults play. They wanted to be part of that world, they thought it was the most exciting thing that could happen to them, and so they started to replicate it in a completely serious way, as if they were doing something important, as if they were maturing. At that age, people feel the need to find labels for their lives: what I want to be, where I want to live, who I want to be with, and so on. In my opinion, choosing an occupation at the age of 16 is a terrible thing. Especially with the predominant ideas in Germany and in the rest of Europe with regard of jobs and professions. With their idea about love something similar happens: I was surprised to see how at such an early age they had already formed an idea of love as something strong, direct and unbreakable. The film emerges out of these questions.”
Best feature film at the Torino Film Festival, 2001.
FIPRESCI special mention at the International Film Festival of Toronto, 2001.
Nicole is fourteen years old and she is sure that something important is going to happen in her life very soon.