Boxhagener Platz

In East Berlin in 1968, a twelve year old boy lives in the same neighbourhood as his grandmother Otti. Otti has buried five husbands and the sixth is lying ill; meanwhile two old men from the square begin to court her. One is a former Nazi, the other a former militant of the workers’ movement, and the two live side by side in the same streets. The boy watches all of it and learns what growing up means out on the street rather than at home. That the country has not settled accounts with its own past is clear from the presence of those two old men. Gudrun Ritter and Michael Gwisdek appear in the hundred and three minute film adapted from Torsten Schulz’s novel; Matti Geschonneck’s production was completed in 2010.