Saxonia Media has achieved an utterly magnificent, deeply moving novel adaptation here!
"My father may sometimes have drunk away our last money in some dive, he may even have beaten my mother bloody more than once: I always wanted him to stay. But to be different."
Kaiserslautern in the nineties: Christian Baron tells the story of his childhood, of his violent father and his depressive mother. He describes what it means to grow up in poverty in this wealthy country. What it feels like, as a small boy, to experience male violence. What it means, as a young person, to become a class defector. What remains of all those memories. And how he managed to find his own way.
With great narrative power and intensity, Christian Baron portrays people in social precarity and hopelessness. Their lived reality is barely heard in politics, in the media or in literature. Ein Mann seiner Klasse explains nothing and yet reveals so much of what is amiss in our society. Reading Christian Baron is shocking, enriching and important, and we thank SWR and the producers Daniela Zentner and Kerstin Lipownik for this intense and authentic cinematic realisation.
Director: Marc Brummund
Casting: Mai Seck