JUNGES LICHT

A childhood in the industrial region of the Ruhr in the early 1960s. Confronted with sex and violence, death and guilt and the intoxicating new sensation of freedom, a coalminer’s son experiences a summer full of seduction, when everything changes — and yet remains the way it was.

Julian Collien is 12 and lives in a mining village characterized by constrictions, poverty and brutality. Julian doesn’t see any point in school: he wants to be a miner, just like his father. When his mother, who suffers from colic, has a nervous breakdown and takes his little sister to the sea to recuperate, Julian and his father are left by themselves during the summer holidays. Now Julian feels responsible for the household, making bread and butter for his father and meeting him at the pit at the end of his shift. Julian doesn’t much like spending time with the other boys in the village, whose games tend to be violent. However, their landlord, Gorny, lends him a camera and tells the boy to take photographs of his friends when they go swimming. But Julian would much rather watch Marusha, Gorny’s precocious 15-year-old step-daughter, who has captivated him with her charms — and also cast a spell over his father…

Director

ADOLF WINKELMANN was born in 1946. A selection of his films includes: DIE ABFAHRER (1978), JEDE MENGE KOHLE (1981), SUPER (1983), BANG! YOU ARE DEAD (1986), NORDKURVE (1992), YOUNG LIGHT (2016), as well as numerous TV movies and mini-series.

Adolf Winkelmann (photo © Christiane Schaefer) photos © Slama Winkelmann (1/2), Willi Weber (3/4)