The Grand Illusion

Adapted from actress and musician Christiane Felscherinow’s harrowing account of her teenage years, CHRISTIANE F. depicts the impact of West Berlin’s mid-to-late-70s heroin epidemic on one of its youngest and luckiest survivors. On the cusp of fourteen, David Bowie-worshipping Christiane (Natja Brunckhorst) begins slipping out from under the watch of her divorced mother and spending time at hip discotheque Sound. There she falls in love with Detlev (Thomas Haustein), whose recent experiments with heroin soon have her hooked.

Working with first-time actors and shooting on location with real-life regulars of Zoo Station’s notorious drug cruising scene, director Uli Edel unflinchingly captures the degradation of each phase of junkie life, from underage prostitution to brutal withdrawals to the seemingly endless vows to “go straight.” Bowie himself appears in a concert performance of “Station to Station”; the film’s soundtrack is a virtual compendium of the epochal musician’s celebrated “Berlin period” and a perfect sonic evocation of nightclubbing’s dark side.

In German with English subtitles.

“One of the most horrifying movies I have ever seen… the images are so powerful, the horrors so strong and the performances (by a cast of young unknowns) so utterly, bleakly, realistic. This is a movie of hell.” Roger Ebert