Irish Film Institute -About a Girl

About a Girl

Director:

Germany| 2005. English subtitles. Colour. Dolby stereo. 105 min.


It is winter in Eberswalde, a hopeless German provincial town. Tomboy Joe, a stoic, intense yet naive 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 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.

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