COMBAT GIRLS (KRIEGERIN)

Feature Film Competition

Director David Wnendt

Germany, 2011, 103 min, color

German with English Subtitles

EXHIBITION PREMIERE: February 23, 2012

WATCH TRAILER  |  WATCH FULL FILM

CAST AND CREDITS:

Director: David Wnendt

Writer: David Wnendt

Starring: Alina Levshin, Jella Haase, Sayed Ahmad Wasil Mrowat, Gerdy Zint, Lukas Steltner, Sven Splettstößer

COMBAT GIRLS (KRIEGERIN)

Feature Film Competition

Director David Wnendt, Germany, 2011, 103 min, color

German with English Subtitles

WATCH TRAILER  |  WATCH FULL FILM

OVERVIEW:

Its summer and hot. A small-town somewhere in Germany. Marisa is in her early twenties and a two-fisted racist. She rushes aggressively through the world like a open razor blade. Her hair is shaved off and the word “Skingirl” is tattooed on her shoulder and just next to the swastika. She hates foreigners, Jews, niggers, cops and everybody who she finds guilty for the reason that her boyfriend Sandro´s sitting in jail and that everything else in her life, her town, her country, her life and the whole world is going down the drain.

She´s a part of a Nazi-gang. There is Melanie, who is called “frogshit” by everyone. Her black colored hair is brushed into her face and the only sentence leaving her mouth is: “Shut your trash!“. Or Benny, who films everything with his cell phone and laughs himself sick as soon as Melanie is so drunk that she cannot walk straight anymore. And there is the fourteen year old Svenja, the newcomer of the group, who tries to make friends and slides deeper into the Nazi gang.

Close to the small-town is a home for asylum seekers, which is located in a previous soviet casern in the middle of the forest. Everybody who gets send there tries to get away as soon as possible. The Afghans Rasul, 14 and his older brother Jamil are stranded in that place. All they want is to get away to Sweden where they have acquaintances.

The worlds of Rasul and Marisa collide with each other. Marisa’s hate is driving her so far that she drives over the two asylum seekers. Through this incidence an order of events starts which turns their world upside down. Slowly Marisa and Rasul start getting to know each other and a cautious friendship starts to develop between the two. Then Marisa’s boyfriend Sandro is getting released out of jail. He is radical and fanatic and is becoming a greater and greater threat. He forces Marisa to make a decision.

In the end it is Svenja and not Marisa who gets a chance to free herself.

The core of the movie is about the maturation of a human and that the one, from whom it is least expected, takes the chance to change his or her personality. The movie is an unsparing background study. It shows that right slogans and the national-socialistic idea of a man shatters under the confrontation with reality. Marisa’s emotional maturation is only possible through the breakage of her previous world outlook.

The basic foundation of the screenplay was a long investigation. Guided interviews with girls and young women out of the neo-Nazi movement in the whole of Germany, as well as documentary observations of demonstrations in youth centers and other meeting points of teenagers were necessary.

The movie should clarify without being superficial educational. It should provoke and entertain the audience but avoids cheap effects.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:

“In the summer of 1998 I worked for a film project in Lausitz. While I had conversations with adolescents, I noticed that many of them have extreme right-wing opinions. Remarkable was the fact that many girls there have this opinion. This was the reason and point of origin for my long research to go deeper into this topic.

In the movie we get a close connection to the figures. Nevertheless the camera brings moments of distance and enables an analytical and critical point of view for the spectators.  The combination of professional actors and non-professionals allows for a realistic acting.

The movie is supposed to teach facts without being too educational. “COMBAT GIRLS” shall avoid the clichés and enable a real understanding without excusing the actions of the figures.”

David Wnendt, January 2012