Friendship (4½ Stars)

This is a road movie about the journey of two Ossis from Berlin to San Francisco. If you don't know what an Ossi is, where have you been since 1989?

Tom is an outsider at school. He has no friends apart from Veit, also an outsider. They leave school in 1990, shortly after the Berlin Wall is demolished. When they receive their first West German Marks on July 1st 1990 they decide to go on holiday to San Francisco, since it's the world's westernmost point. "Beyond San Francisco there is only sea and Asia".

Their shiny new Deutschmarks aren't enough to pay for a flight to San Francisco, so they fly to New York. After all, the two cities can't be that far apart, it's all the same country. With $55 between them they begin to hitch-hike across America. They're hindered by the fact that they can't speak English. On the way they do whatever they can to make money to survive. In one town they work as strippers in a gay bar. In another town they paint pieces of broken concrete and sell it as fragments of the Berlin Wall.

Believe it or not, this comedy is based on a true story. The producer, Tom Zickler, made this journey with friends in 1990. He really did work as a stripper to make money. Fact is often stranger than fiction.

As a comedy, "Friendship" is only moderately funny. I enjoy it more as a serious film. It's a brilliant portrayal of the culture clash when two Communist teenagers enter the free world. The boys are so delightfully cute in their naivety. Unfortunately the film has only been released in Germany, and the DVD doesn't have English subtitles.