Goodbye Berlin

Fatih Akin's latest is more conventional than we've come to expect from the Turkish-German filmmaker, but this teen road movie has its charms

Film Review by Michelle Devereaux | 26 Jun 2017
Film title: Goodbye Berlin
Director: Fatih Akin
Starring: Tristan Göbel, Anand Batbileg, Mercedes Müller, Anja Schneider, Uwe Bohn, Udo Samel

There are two mysteries at the centre of Goodbye Berlin, neither of which really has anything to do with the film’s focus on the mild comedic misadventures of two 14-year-old misfits. The first is why its original German title, Tschick, was changed to reference a city that never features in a single frame – while Berlin may be mentioned in this road movie set in rural east Germany, it’s never a specific destination, and it’s certainly never bid Auf Wiedersehen.

The second mystery is even more head-scratching: how could Fatih Akin, the Turkish-German filmmaker responsible for emotionally sprawling, visually arresting gems like Head-On and The Edge of Heaven, direct such a conventional, fitfully engaging coming-of-age tale?

When oddball Russian transfer student Tschick (Anand Batbileg), bursts on to the sedately middle-class scene of lovelorn loser Maik (Tristan Göbel), he repulses everyone with his weird, antisocial behaviour: he carries around bottles of vodka, sports Hawaiian shirts and duct-taped shoes, and is rumoured to have ties to the Russian mafia. He also happens to be the only noticeably non-white kid in school.

Eventually he and Maik bond over their mutual outcast status. When Maik is left home alone during summer break while his alcoholic mother dries out at a “beauty farm” and his father cavorts with his mistress, Tschick shows up at his door with a stolen car and they decide to go on an extended joyride.

Based on a bestselling novel by Wolfgang Herrndorf, Goodbye Berlin does have a shopworn charm. Both young actors embody their roles effectively (especially Batblieg, who has a goofy charisma), but unfortunately the film’s one truly fresh element, the strangely symbiotic relationship between Maik and his mother (the sparking Anja Schneider), is mostly abandoned for sketchy, stock scenarios often derivative to the point of pointlessness.


Goodbye Berlin (Tschick) screens at EIFF 2017, 24 & 26 Jun http://edfilmfest.org.uk