“Wildes Herz” is a film about “Feine Sahne Fischfilet”, one of the most successful German punk rock bands, and their lead singer, Jan “Monchi” Gorkow. A young band who are under surveillance by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which gives them the right to call themselves the most dangerous band in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. A film that shows how musicians fight against Nazis and feelings of emptiness and frustration, in a region where home means the beautiful flat countryside. With music that’s quite unlike their home: strong, loud, joyous.

As this film examines Jan “Monchi” Gorkow’s life in home movies and interviews with his parents we gradually begin to understand that it is a parable on, a coming to terms with and an answer to what happened in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern after the reunification. When a refugee centre in Rostock-Lichtenhagen was on fire, the population applauding and the police looking the other way. That is the time Monchi grew up in. His path – or his rage – took him via the ultras of F.C. Hansa Rostock to the moment when his punk band realised at the end of the noughties that Nazis enjoyed their gigs. Taking a stance was called for. The leftist movements of the 1990s failed, Gorkow says, and that this must never happen again. An important, almost normal, poetic and rough film – exactly like the band.

Leopold Grün

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Award winner of the ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, Gedanken-Aufschluss-Prize and DEFA Sponsoring Prize