Actor-director Detlev Buck has tended to specialise in comedies. But he shifts gear with this streetwise rites-of-passage drama set in Berlin’s rundown Neukölln district, which uncompromisingly explores the socio-cultural problems that have dogged Germany since unification in 1990.
Evicted from his luxury apartment by mother Jenny Elvers-Elbertzhagen’s doctor boyfriend, teenager David Kross gets even by joining his new Turkish buddies on a retributive robbery. However, he’s soon lured into a darker underworld by local drug baron Erhan Emre, who offers him protection in return for some couriering.
Buck keeps the action low-key and credible and bolsters it with a gallery of vivid characters.