Max Willutzki

A story about the continuity and collapse of history, the power of suppression, and the terror of reconciliation; loyalty, treason and revenge. In a brave cinematic game, Heinrich Böll’s story Billiards at Half-Past Nine is split up into cracks, blocks, breaks and sudden turns, as the life story of a German family, covering numerous generations, is propelled forward.

Wolle has lost his apprenticeship. Out of shame, he hides it from his parents and his girlfriend, who leaves him as a result. He starts drinking and joins a group of unemployed young people who are mainly interested in motorcycles and are in constant danger of going off the rails. The Benedictine brother Lukas wants to get the young people off the streets and sets up a youth club with them. But when they are suspected of having committed a theft, the club is closed down. The young people occupy it. The police want to storm it. Wolle goes up to the roof and threatens to jump down.

Vera Romeyke is an idealistic and committed teacher who tries to interest her pupils in the subject matter with new forms of teaching. In role-playing games, they are encouraged to reflect on their own lives and those of their parents and learn to question social conventions. The conservative parents fear that this project is aimed at "left-wing indoctrination". They turn to the school authorities, who eventually transfer Vera Romeyke.

The former DFFB student and filmmaker Max D. Willutzki moved to the Märkisches Viertel (MV) in 1969, a large housing estate built between 1963 and 1974 for 60,000 residents on the outskirts of West Berlin. Together with Christian Ziewer and others, he documented the political neighbourhood work on the estate. The resulting »Basis-Filme« formed the starting point for the later Basis-Film distribution company. This film shows how the Arbeitskreis Mieten und Wohnen (workgroup rents and housing) succeeds in preventing the forced eviction of the working-class Puhle family, who can no longer pay their rent.

Docufiction about rent protests in the Märkisches Viertel in Berlin.