The duds
Die Blindganger is a German children's and youth film from 2004. Helmut Dziuba wrote the script together with director Bernd Sahling .
content
The two thirteen-year-old girls Marie and Inga live in a boarding school . They go to a school for the blind there. Both are enthusiastic musicians, and when they read an advertisement in which a school band is looking for reinforcements, they apply. The guys in this band are convinced of the girls' musical abilities, but it bothers them that they are blind . They do not consider them to be suitable for media use in music videos . But the girls don't let that discourage them.
Marie meets the young Russian-German Herbert. He is on the run from the police because his father is looking for him. Herbert wants to go back to his mother in Kazakhstan . Marie hides Herbert in the attic of the boarding school. Since Herbert needs money for the return trip, she performs street musicians with him and her friend Inga . But the money they collect is stolen from them.
This new setback does not discourage them either. When they heard about a competition for school bands on television, they formed a band with their boarding school friend Daniel, which they called “Die Blindganger”. In the meantime Herbert is discovered by the police and brought back to his father, but the boarding school supervisor Mr. Karl helps them to finish the video.
And the duds actually win. So Herbert, who has since run away from his father, gets the money and can go back to his home country.
Remarks
The screenwriter Helmut Dziuba had many years of experience in children's films for DEFA . The topic of disability has been increasingly addressed in German films in recent years, for example in Beyond the Silence , Silent Love and Peas at 5:30 .
Summary
Alexandra Wach emphasizes in her analysis that the film approaches the topic without sentimentality. The blind are not highlighted as something special, but shown as completely normal people with strengths and weaknesses. The blind also have prejudices against the sighted and refer to them somewhat condescendingly as “peeps”. Inga thinks, for example, that "a peep who deals with a blind person must have it." The film deals with a typical topic for a youth film - growing up. The blind girls have to dare to take the step in the true sense of the word and get out of the protective walls of the boarding school.
Reviews
“A very sensitive picture of first love, the courage to go your own way and growing up. See the world in a completely different way. Director Bernd Sahling shows not only an extraordinary friendship, but also that every person has to go his own way, no matter how he turns out. "
“Blind people are not exactly the first choice for the leading roles in a movie. ... In the past few months, however, German film producers have taken on this unusual topic astonishingly often. … Bernd Sahling has now also directed a feature film with 'Die Blindganger', which he succeeded in doing more sensitively and originally than his colleague Büchel ( peas at half past six ). ... He succeeds in a commendable way in convincing the problems and worries, but also the everyday life of the visually impaired youth. "
“With 'Die Blindgänger', director Bernd Sahling has succeeded in making an unusual children's film. With a great sense of humor, he shows the everyday life of two blind girls as what it is to them: completely normal! The film places the topic of disability in the general context of being different or foreign. It invites the viewer to 'see' differently, especially through the extraordinary use of music and sounds. "
Awards
The dud received several awards in 2004. At the Berlinale , the director Bernd Sahling received the honorable mention of the children's jury as well as a special award from the German Children's Fund . Peter Ziesche was nominated for the German Camera Prize, while the German Film Prize went to Ingelore König . The image description spoken by Uta-Maria Torp was awarded the German Audio Film Prize in 2006. In addition to these German film prizes, the director Bernd Sahling received other international prizes for Die Blindgänger : in Canada at the Carrousel International du Film the Camério of the Humanities, the adult jury prize at the International Children's Film Festival in Chicago, in the Netherlands a Cinekid Prize and a Starkid Award at the Finnish Oulu Children's Film Festival.
Web links
- The dud in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The duds at Filmportal.de
- Pictures from the film
- Review of the film
Individual evidence
- ↑ The duds in the Hörfilm database of Hörfilm e. V.
- ↑ Review on the audio film award website