The honey cuckoo children

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title The honey cuckoo children
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1992
length 88 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Willy Brunner
script Mirjam Pressler, Wilma Horne, Erika Schmidt, Willy Brunner
production Willy Brunner, Erika Schmidt, co-producer
music Bernd Witthüser, Otto Richter
camera Ivo Krizan
cut Alexander Rupp (FSO)
occupation

Die Honigkuckuckskinder is a German children's film by Willy Brunner. The film was freely financed by the producer Willy Brunner and the co-producer Erika Schmidt without any funding or television participation. In June 1992 the film premiered at the Munich Film Festival (children's film section). Since the film could not be distributed, the producer Willy Brunner decided to distribute the film himself in January 1993, together with Globusfilm-Verleih as a service provider, with only a few copies and without the usual distribution funding. Despite these handicaps, the film was one of the ten most successful German cinema films in 1993, according to InsideKino Box Office. To date (2018) it is also the most successful German children's film based on an original script.

A funding program from FFA Berlin to safeguard the national film heritage made it possible in 2017 to digitize analog films. Willy Brunner brought the film to the cinemas again as a self-distribution, this time with DCP copies. The film was shown again on October 1, 2017.

action

A silo construction on the site of an inland port, which had not been used for a long time, was converted into the "Hotel Paradies" "for the purpose of profit maximization". Asylum seekers, tolerated persons, resettlers and homeless people are admitted and accommodated here. The “guests” also include illegals and paying guests. Helene Behrend and daughter Lena are instructed by the social welfare office, while the street musicians Otto & Bernelli just live in the hotel. Asrat and his little brother Efrem from Ethiopia are illegally brought across the border and robbed. Without money or passport, they end up in Mr Schmuck's hotel silo. The African girl Ajoke and her family have applied for asylum. Florin and his mother, a German resettler, are waiting for recognition and an apartment. To his mother's annoyance, he only spends his time with Mr. Schmuck's dubious helpers Toni and Knister. Many people spend days, weeks and years in this concrete hotel and wait. These people, who have been marginalized by society, find practically no contact with one another, and meet with distrust and fear. The children are different: They make friends quickly and call themselves the honey cuckoo children because, like the young African honey cuckoo, they have fallen out of the nest and have to assert themselves in a strange environment.

For the children, the “Hotel Paradies”, its guests and the harbor area are a welcome adventure playground. Lena gets to know Ajoke on a foray into the hotel. The two girls become friends, much to the displeasure of Lena's mother, who is having a hard time with the social decline, the shabby hotel and everything foreign. When one day her jewelry and silver cutlery are stolen from her, she accuses her friends and forbids her to deal with them any further. The children do not want to let the accusation of theft sit on them and now take action on their part.

Efrem, who has become friends with the two girls, realizes that his brother Asrat is keeping himself afloat by selling stolen goods. Including Helene's silver cutlery. He confronts his brother on his nightly sales tour and snatches the silver cutlery from him. In the meantime, the girls observe a suspicious boat and mysterious activities in the dark. When there is calm again, they overcome their fears, climb into a shipwreck and find stolen property and many international passports, including Asrat's papers. But they only understand the connections when the crying Efrem tells them about his experience. They are horrified when they realize that Schmuck is having the cross-border commuters von Knister and Toni who he smuggled in, robbing them of their passports and then offering the desperate people accommodation and money in exchange for illegal work and the sale of stolen property. Asrat, like the other illegals, are helplessly at the mercy of the hotel owner.

What to do? It is very clear to the children that reporting to the police is putting Asrat and many of their friends at risk. Together with the street musicians Otto & Bernelli, Lena finds a "dreamy" solution: a house party is celebrated. Otto & Bernelli play, the guest of honor Mr. Schmuck is enthusiastic. However, a fat chicken bone sticks in his throat when he is musically confronted with his atrocities in public.

production

Willy Brunner, who was able to draw attention to himself with social reports for ZDF after graduating from the Munich Film School, had the idea for the children's film in 1990. In contrast to the usual committee-sponsored children's and fairy tale films, the film should deal critically with the reality of the Federal Republic of Germany and focus on people who live on the fringes of society: refugees, illegals, homeless people, including many children. When designing the project, he was able to draw on his documentary experience. His highly acclaimed reports “When living becomes priceless” and “The limit of hope - about illegal immigration” as well as his acquaintance with Felix von Solemacher, who ran a large collective accommodation for asylum seekers for Caritas, were the wealth of experience that Brunner was able to draw on for the story . He was able to win over the well-known author Mirjam Pressler as co-writer on the script . The likewise renowned and multiple award-winning author Andreas Steinhöfel wrote the book of the same name on the film for dtv Verlag based on the original. The television rights to the film went to six-time Oscar winner Arthur Cohn , Switzerland, who then hosted the film on ARD .

Awards and festival invitations (selection)

  • The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable.
  • World premiere at the Munich Film Festival in 1992
  • 4th International Children's Film Festival Vienna
  • 3. 41st International Film Festival Mannheim
  • 14th MAX OPHÜLS PREIS Film Festival 1993, Saarbrücken (Series: Perspektiven des Young German-Language Films)
  • 28th Solothurn Film Festival
  • 1993 Golden Sparrow, Gera
  • 1993 The Chicago International Children's Film Festival
  • 1994 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia.
  • 11th Festival Intern du Cinema Jeune Public de Laon, France
  • 1994 International Foundation for Children and Youth, Moscow
  • 1994 Buff, the children and youth film festival in Malmö
  • 1994 Cape Town International Film Festival, South Africa

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ InsideKino Box Office
  2. ↑ FFA Filmförderungsanstalt - Digitization of the German Film Heritage
  3. ↑ Munich Film Festival (Children's Film Section)