A Heavy Heart

Herbert is a former East German boxing champion. He works now as a bouncer at a club, collects debts and trains a young boxer. His body was the only capital he had. Then something goes wrong with his hand, and the diagnosis follows: ALS. He will lose his muscles step by step and there is no cure. He has whatever time is left to put things right with the daughter he became estranged from. Thomas Stuber shot the film in Leipzig and Halle. Peter Kurth put on sixteen kilos for the part and took the weight back off over the thirty five day shoot to show the illness progressing. He was named best actor at the German Film Award for it, and the film took the silver prize. The telling neither slides into emotional exploitation nor keeps its distance; it shows the body collapsing directly.