Berlin in summer is a particular challenge: The dense development and sealing of the soil causes the heat to build up, so that so-called heat islands form. The term “hotspot” is to be understood quite literally. The concrete-covered Alexanderplatz can be up to ten degrees warmer in summer than the less densely populated Spandau to the west. The silent film classic “People on Sunday” from 1930 already captured the special Berlin summer atmosphere – in recent cinema history, “Lola Runs”, “Summer in Front of the Balcony” and “Sun and Concrete” also told of everyday summer life in the overheated city.
State of emergency: 35 degrees, shimmering asphalt, sticky air and constant traffic noise. Sorina Gajewski's coming-of-age debut “Nulpen” captures the “Summer in the City” rush not as a slick Instagram postcard, but as a brittle, sweaty attitude to life. “Nulpen” is a film that pretends to be about nothing, when in reality it is about everything that is important: about being lost, about the search for love and friendship and about the eternal question of when life actually begins and where it leads.
Ramona (Bella Lochmann) and Nico (Pola Geiger) drift together through the sweltering Berlin summer – looking for a lost bird and themselves.
Ramona and Nico – played by the wonderfully unaffected young actresses Bella Lochmann and Pola Geiger – are two teenagers without a plan, but with far too much energy to just chill. Summer is scorching hot, the city is loud, life is untidy. When an impulsive shot with a gun breaks the grumpy neighbor's window, a crazy odyssey begins. Because this neighbor, who oscillates between indignation and pedagogical arrogance, imposes a supposedly educational task on the girls: they should look after his bird. What happens next is logical, fatal and wonderfully symbolic – the girls open the cage and the bird flies away. What begins as a small rebellion becomes the starting point of a search that goes far beyond responsibility for a little bird.
The hunt for the escaped poultry is of course nothing more than a cipher for the general search for meaning. Together with Ramona's twelve-year-old brother Noah (Rio Kirchner) – an annoyingly lovable companion who oscillates between childish curiosity and youthful intrusiveness – the two stagger through a Berlin that is shown here less as a film set than as the living space of a generation. While the Fridays for Future demos fill the city streets in central Berlin, this Trio Infernale stumbles through neighborhoods, parks and people's lives that sometimes seem funny, sometimes tragic or just plain absurd.
City portrait with nouvelle vague vibes
The fact that “Nulpen” maintains a playful lightness despite the heat and disorientation is primarily due to the direction. Sorina Gajewski knows how to show her Berlin realistically, but without any social drama heaviness. It appears as an everyday urban biotope that reveals its greatest beauty in small, seemingly ugly moments. Instead of pathos or accusation, there is dry humor, precise dialogue and a lovingly precise look at the way young people think, talk and lose themselves today. Her characters don't pose, they happen. Gajewski observes instead of judging – and that is precisely one of the greatest merits of this film.
Visually, “Nulpen” is reminiscent in many moments of films from the French Nouvelle Vague: hand-held camera, spontaneous encounters, elliptical editing, interspersed with scenes that seem random but are precisely composed. When Ramona and Nico drift through heated backyards or abandoned construction sites, something of François Truffaut's “They kissed and they beat him” resonates – a mixture of youthful rebelliousness and fragile poetry that is otherwise rarely found in German films.
An authentic portrait of Gen Z
“Nulpen” refuses everything that conventional coming-of-age cinema usually delivers. There is no moral purification, no pathetic ending, no dramatic self-discovery with a surging soundtrack. Instead, at the end there is a feeling of hope that is more tender and honest than any drama and tells of a beginning. A beginning that leaves open where it leads – like life itself.
Thematically, “Nulpen” joins the growing number of films that dedicate an authentic portrait of Generation Z – but Sorina Gajewski avoids the mistake of explaining or even transfiguring her main characters with catchphrases or sociological labels. Your young people do not have to embody social theses – they are simply people who are standing on the threshold of a closed door and do not yet know what lies behind it. The calm honesty of the narrative, together with humor and a loving directness, gives the film a special freshness.
Noah (Rio Kirchner), Ramona's twelve-year-old brother, can sometimes be quite annoying – but with a lot of childlike curiosity, he doesn't leave the girls' sides.
Even though the film is almost laconically short at 75 minutes, every dialogue, every eye movement, every little misunderstanding between Mona, Nico and Noah tells more about youth and Berlin than many a feature essay. It is precisely in its lightness that the emotional depth lies – when the two girls talk about silverfish, spiders or the pointless waiting for something, it is never banal. They are funny, poetic miniatures of the present, honest and occasionally full of tender melancholy.
In the end, one thing remains certain: “Nulpen” is not a film about heroes, but about young people who have no idea how adult life actually works – and that's exactly why they seem touchingly real. Sorina Gajewski succeeds in showing Berlin and youth as a chaotic, vibrant, sometimes ugly, but always lively unity and reality. She doesn't need any grand gestures for this. Just heat, humor and two young women who set out with open minds and open hearts, perhaps not to find a bird, but to find a little bit of themselves.
Conclusion: A funny, wonderfully shimmering portrait of generations – and at the same time a very special Berlin summer film.