Andreas Dresen’s coming-of-age tale about a gang of childhood friends growing up in the Leipzig suburbs of a newly reunified Germany in the early 1990s, stomps and thrashes its way on to the big screen at Berlinale – pulsing and throbbing with a loud, colourful vitality that brings a vanished world back to life. With a cast of young German actors, most of whom were born after the act of unification in 1990, the film conveys its time period through an everyday vernacular more familiar to those growing up under Chancellor Helmut Kohl than Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Haircuts, clothing, and cars long-forgotten come rushing back to life, but it’s the soundtrack, populated by drum & bass, trip hop and techno tracks, which really add to the emotionally charged punch-ups and street-brawl that so often fill the screen. Moderat’s ‘A New Error’, last heard in the trailer for Xavier Dolan’s superb film LAURENCE ANYWAYS, crops up twice in the film; and in both instances manage to induce the same spine-tingling sensibility that comes with a loud, deep sub-bass coupled with a flangey-synth pulse which seemingly chants “You. Are. Part. Of. This. Scene. You. Are. Here” over and over again. In short, the soundtrack to AS WE WERE DREAMING really works.

“Leipzig stops on the edge of the city, whereas Berlin extends its tentacles out.”

We see the gang of boys grow up from a time of East and West Germany, to a time of unification where, due to their age and temperament, they are left to drift in a hinterland of neo-Nazi skinheads, underground nightclubs, and fraternal experimentation with drugs. Blond Rico (Julius Nitschkoff) wants to pursue a boxing career but is hindered by his anger management. Dani (Merlin Rose), who has moppy brown hair, falls in love with a classmate called Little Star (Ruby O. Fee), only to see her move away and set up shop with those natural antagonists, the neo-Nazi scumbags. Perhaps not familiar to a UK readership, the film is adapted from Clemens Meyer’s 2006 multi-award-winning novel of the same name, but if the setting seems initially unfamiliar to a cinema audience in Cambridge or London, the themes within are universal: the fleeting nature of youth and its naively Utopian ideals for the future; first love; lost love; the anger and fear at those who try to stifle one’s dreams; and the realisation that the world has a cost, with other people pushing ahead of you constantly.

Screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhass stated in the Berlinale press conference following the film’s premiere that it “does have something to do with the GDR as Leipzig was in the GDR […] Leipzig stops on the edge of the city, whereas Berlin extends its tentacles out.” Even though the GDR is long gone, the hope must be for this film that it can imbue itself with a bit of Berlin’s influential reach, and travel not just on film festival circuits around the world, but also on cinematic releases in the UK, France and further afield. There should always be time on the cinema screen to serve up parables of friendships long passed, and the risk of ignoring and isolating the youthful members of your society. As we’ve seen in the past few years with uprisings ridding the world of entrenched political establishments, the dreamers nearly always wake up…
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