Berlin Bad Trip

Dramatic, loving, with humor and lots of music: in the series “Nackt über Berlin” (Naked in Berlin) by Axel Ranisch, two students force their principal to bare his soul, thereby messing up their own lives as well. At their school in Berlin-Lichtenberg, the two 17-year-old teenagers Jannik (Lorenzo Germeno) and Tai (Anh Khoa Tran) are being bullied. When they find and film their hated principal Lamprecht (Thorsten Merten), drunk as a skunk and slurring his words, in a compressive situation, the two pupils decide to finally turn the tables: They lock Lamprecht in his own apartment in a state-of-the-art apartment building and monitor him via a hacked smart home system. What begins as a harmless prank turns into a kidnapping and psychological ordeal: while Lamprecht tries to find out who is holding him captive, he reveals more and more details about his life via the computer - from his failed marriage to a tragic incident with a schoolgirl. Jannik and Tai confront him anonymously as “God” and force him to perform a soul striptease. At the same time, they struggle with their own inner demons... In six episodes, director Axel Ranisch (“Alki Alki”) has created an unusual, courageous mini-series which, with all kinds of comedic interludes, is somewhere between coming-of-age drama, black humor comedy and psychological thriller. Ranisch adapts his own novel with a great deal of artistic freedom and a flair for bizarre yet profound characters, whose absurd revenge plot develops into a multi-layered story about power, guilt, identity, manipulation and friendship. "NACKT ÜBER BERLIN combines everything that makes Axel Ranisch and his films so special, indeed so particularly good and extraordinary: the sympathy for his equally nerdy and lovable anti-heroes, outsiders who refuse to bend. [...] And as is often the case with Ranisch, wishful thinking and nightmares are wrapped up in bizarrely grotesque interludes. This increases the fun factor considerably. But the series also works almost perfectly in terms of dramaturgy. The leaps in time, which increasingly shed light on Lamprecht's life, are always comprehensible, condense the story and create the kind of pull that series makers and viewers want so much. [...] - the series is full of wonderful details and surprises. It shows how you can arouse curiosity and build up a lot of suspense even without a crime thriller pattern." (Rainer Tittelbach, on: tittelbach.tv)