Dicke Mädchen
Director: Axel Ranisch
Writer: Axel Ranisch, Heiko Pinkowski, Peter Trabner
Cast: Heiko Pinkowski, Peter Trabner, Ruth Bickelhaupt
Part of: identities Festival

Plot:
Sven (Heiko Pinkowski) lives with his mother Edeltraut (Ruth Bickelhaupt) in a small apartment. Edeltraut suffers from dementia, so Sven hired Daniel (Peter Trabner) to take care of her while he is at work. But one day, Edeltraut locks Daniel on the balcony and then heads out of the apartment on her own. The ensuing search brings Sven and Daniel closer together, much to Sven’s happiness, as he had a crush on Daniel for a while.

Dicke Mädchen is a super-low-budget film. And that’s quite noticeable in the lack of technology quality. But the actors are amazing, the film is really funny and it just has an excellent heart. So never mind that it isn’t really HD.

When people talk about this film there is always two things that they mention, so I don’t want to leave you hanging without that info, either. :) 1: the film cost a grand total of 517,32 euros. And 2: it was Ruth Bickelhaupt’s acting debut (at 89 years of age) – she’s actually the director’s grandma and the film was also shot in her apartment. Axel Ranisch (who is like the most adorable person) was actually present at the showing I attended and he told us that she is now acting quite a bit, which I find really cool.

But even more importantly than those stories around the movie is that the movie itself is great. It approaches the topic of dementia quite light-heartedly and with a good sense of humor without glossing over the difficulties, which is a nice and unusual way to go about it and I appreciated it a lot. And Bickelhaupt is pitch-perfect in the role.

Both Pinkowski and Trabner do hold their own as well, though. They improvised most/all of the script and that does show sometimes (but it was never as bad or annoying as High Road, so that’s good). That’s also due to the editing, that was just concise enough to not have things drag on, but didn’t make things feel rushed.

In short, it’s just a really good example of what you can do, even with little resources, if you go about it with brains, heart and talent. I had a great time.

Summarising: worth seeing.