"Gebranntes Kind" is a platonic love story. Two seemingly unalike people become friends and find support and security in one another. Their pasts hold common ground — experiences of guilt and loss. Through their chance encounter, both are offered the chance of forgiveness, inner and outer alike. In the Berlin district of Neukölln, different worlds collide: long-established members of the traditional working class, immigrants, students, tourists from every corner of the globe. The district has changed; rich and poor crash up against one another. Alongside lively cafés and new consumer trends, pensioners collect deposit bottles and, though they have been at home here for years, no longer belong — they grow lonely and live shut away in a world of their own. Hermannplatz draws the homeless, street children and beggars. It is a microcosm within the macrocosm of the city. What do these people have in common — even though they began life at a different time and in such different circumstances? Could they form a friendship? Chances taken and chances missed, blows of fate, moments of happiness and grief shape the courses of their lives. Some seem to draw strength and self-assurance even from the deepest sorrow. To create a cinematic dreamscape that, despite its unflinching grounding in reality, still allows the viewer to be taken on a gripping cinematic journey — that is the aim of this film.
The premiere takes place on Sunday, 5 April 2020 at 6.00 pm at IL KINO, Nansenstraße 22, 12047 Berlin-Neukölln.
Director: Arne Duppler