Save Raffi!

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Movie
Original title Save Raffi!
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2015
length 97 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
Rod
Director Arend Agthe
script Arend Agthe,
Bettina Kupfer
production Arend Agthe,
Bettina Kupfer
music Matthias Raue
camera Thomas Benesch
cut Andrea Wenzler
occupation

Save Raffi! (Alternative title Rettet Raffi! - Der Hamsterkrimi ) is a German children's film by the director Arend Agthe from 2015 . It tells the story of eight-year-old Sammy who rescues his golden hamster Raffi from the clutches of a kidnapper.

action

Eight-year-old Sammy lives in Hamburg with his sister Molly and his mother . The father left the family because he needed time off and works in Afghanistan . Sammy misses him and longs for him to return to his family.

One day, Sammy's hamster Raffi falls ill and has to have an operation. When the family stops to buy pizza on their way home after the operation, their car with Raffi in it is stolen by the gangster Rocky, who has just been released from prison and picked up by his friend Miranda. The two of them do not get far because they are running out of gas. Miranda takes Raffi home with her, but because Rocky is annoyed by the animal, he abandons him in front of the house.

Sammy goes looking for Raffi without his mother's knowledge, and actually finds the car that the thieves left under the Köhlbrand Bridge. In it he finds Rocky's release letter from prison, in which Miranda's address is given. When he gets there, the door to the apartment is open and in the apartment he sees Raffi's cage. He is caught by Rocky who claims he found the empty cage in the trash and throws Sammy out of the apartment. However, his interest in Raffi is aroused because Sammy has said that the hamster always sniffed out his father's cigarettes, and that Rocky is looking for smuggled cigarettes that he had hidden in three sea ​​freight containers before his stay in prison , which have since disappeared are.

Rocky observes Sammy, who has discovered Raffi, who, after escaping from a cat, is floating on a wooden board on the Elbe . The boy tries to save the hamster by rowing behind him on a pontoon . While Raffi saves himself on a restaurant ship on the banks of the Elbe, Sammy is almost run over by a container ship , but is rescued by the DLRG at the last moment .

In the restaurant, Sammy learns that the chef has captured Raffi and given it to his brother Lin, who works in Studio Hamburg as a prop master for the TV show Tommy which door , in which hamsters walk through different doors and thus influence the progress of the show. Rocky, who overheard them, is in front of Sammy in the studio and steals Raffi again. He equips the hamster with a mini camera and sends him into the double bottoms of the containers, which meanwhile serve as a prop store for Tommy which door to find his cigarettes. But the hamster bites through the camera cable, escapes, is discovered in the container by Lin and returned to Sammy, who is a guest at Tommy's house with his family .

When the smuggled cigarettes found by customs in the bottom of the containers are supposed to be burned on the TV show, Rocky wants to prevent this. He takes a wheel loader and loads the cigarettes onto its loading shovel, whereby Raffi also comes on the shovel. When Rocky wants to leave the studio, Sammy gets in his way. Before he can run over the boy, Raffi bites through a cable from the wheel loader, which brings it to a standstill. Wants to kill at the moment as Rocky in his anger Raffi, he is of Sammy's father K. o. Beaten. He came back to Germany, saw his son on TV and came to the studio.

Three months later, Sammy's family is reunited, and Raffi, who is a female, has had four babies - father is one of the other hamsters from Tommy's door .

background

Director Arend Agthe wrote the children's book Save Raffi! Together with his wife Bettina Kupfer , who plays the girlfriend of the gangster Rocky in the film . on which the film is based. The hamster Raffi was trained for six months for the shooting, in which 14 doubles were used. After the film was over, Raffi stayed with Sammy actor Nicolaus von der Recke as a pet .

The world premiere took place on March 6, 2015 as part of the Montreal Film Festival. In Germany, the film was shown for the first time in July 2015 at the Munich Film Festival , where it was awarded the Children's Film Festival Audience Award. Save Raffi! came to the cinemas on October 22, 2015 and was released on March 24, 2016 under the title Rettet Raffi! - The hamster thriller on DVD and Blu-Ray .

Save Raffi! received the rating of particularly valuable from the German Film and Media Assessment .

reception

According to Rudolf Worschech from Epd Film , director Arend Agthe “succeeded in creating an adventure film for children that, despite all the turbulent twists and turns, never loses sight of its main character and their sensitivities.” In the opinion of the film service , the film is “characterized by the realistic depiction of the characters and with its cute animal protagonist it wins over itself. "Only music and gags are" sometimes overused, which young viewers shouldn't notice negatively. "

The animal rights organization PETA criticizes that behavior that is unnatural for hamsters is depicted in the film, and that the total of 15 hamster actors were exposed to and suffered unnecessary stress through the training. In the opinion of the German Animal Welfare Association , the way the hamster is depicted in the film is problematic and “far from reality”, which is why the association warns against the rash acquisition of golden hamsters.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Save Raffi! Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2014 (PDF; test number: 148 680 K).
  2. ↑ a b Save Raffi! In: German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) . March 24, 2016, accessed September 18, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b "Save Raffi!": Search for a kidnapped hamster. In: Focus . October 15, 2015, accessed September 18, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Children's Film Festival Audience Award. In: Munich Film Festival . Retrieved September 18, 2016 .
  5. ^ Rudolf Worschech: Critique of Save Raffi! In: EPD film . September 18, 2015, accessed September 18, 2016 .
  6. ↑ a b Save Raffi! In: Filmdienst . Retrieved September 18, 2016 .
  7. ↑ "Save Raffi!" - a dangerous film for hamsters. In: www.petakids.de. PETA , accessed September 19, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Animal rights activists warn against buying hamsters after the "Raffi" movie. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 21, 2015, accessed August 26, 2020 .