The perils of growing up bohemian are wryly explored in this German feature about a 14-year-old girl who rebels against her parents' chaotic lifestyle of free love and destructive excess.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2007
The Unpolished 2006
Die Unerzogenen
The perils of growing up bohemian are wryly evoked in Pia Marais' confident debut feature, based on her own chaotic childhood with hippy parents. Charismatic new discovery Ceci Chuh plays 14-year-old Stevie, who is first seen sharing a cigarette on the side of the road with her mother Lily (Pascale Schiller). When Stevie's rakish father Axel (Birol Ünel from Head On) gets out of jail, the three of them move into an abandoned country house, where they are joined by an assortment of hangers-on, including layabout Ingmar (Georg Friedrich) and free-love sex-pot Louise (Joana Preiss from Dans Paris). Rebelling against her parents' life of destructive excess, Stevie goes out of her way to become normal – but she is foiled at every turn. Marais excels at revealing the hypocrisy inherent in such a world, where immaturity reigns supreme and unchained sexual urges rankle supposedly open minds. This generous picture of society off the rails won a Tiger award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.