21st German Film Festival 2017 (Golden Village)
Queen Of Niendorf
Rating
NC16 Some Mature Content
Language
German with English subtitles
Cast
Lisa Moell, Denny Moritz Sonnenschein, Salim Fazzani, Ivo Tristan Michligk
Synopsis
The summer holidays have just begun in Brandenburg, but 10-year-old Lea isn’t going to camp this year with her friends as she normally would. Lately she’s been finding the other girls in her school increasingly strange anyway. So Lea ends up riding her bike through the village all by herself and visiting Mark, an old musician, who lives on a run-down farm. One afternoon, as Lea rambles through the village, she spots five boys lifting a large blue oil barrel over the fence of a paint factory and then driving away with their loot on a bicycle trailer. Lea’s curiosity is piqued. In her feature film debut, Joya Thome brings her story to life with a modest budget and by working with first-time young actors. In her director’s statement, she says, “Queen of Niendorf is not only the story of a brave girl trying to find her place in life but also an attempt to express a vague longing for simplicity and carefreeness that I feel is characteristic of our generation.”