It is winter in Eberswalde, a hopeless German provincial town, in the lonely years after East Germany fell apart. Tomboy Joe, a stoic, intense yet naïve rebel, rides a clapped-out moped and moves from one soul-destroying job to another. She lives with her mother, who has no telephone, no money, bailiffs knocking on the door and debt up to her eyeballs. Joe is an outsider and an outcast, ridiculed by the angora-clad airheads who hang out in the local drinking holes. Her father, a boxer, died some years back and she in turn has been training in secret all her life, taking out her frustration on an old punch-bag. She is determined that her dad’s trainer will coach her too, and help her follow her dream of entering the ring for real. When Joe’s old (and only) friend Stella returns from Berlin, giving her a companion for the first time in ten years, their friendship almost becomes something more – until Mario, the most popular guy in town, asks for Joe’s number. Things are looking up for Joe until she has to make some hard choices between new and old dreams. The superb Katharina Wackernagel plays Joe like a female Marlon Brando, especially in the breathtaking scenes where she rides her moped through the harsh, empty winter lanes of Eberswalde. In the vein of Girlfight and Million Dollar Baby, Catharina Deus’s brilliant film is sad but hopeful, painful but true. LM
