He wants to talk to them. But not with him. He wants to write with these children, but they laugh at him. He wants them to think about their longings and fears and to read texts about them on stage. "Bullshit," the kids say.
There are five main students, aged between 11 and 14, who invited Lucas Fassnacht, poetry slammer and author, to a school working group called "Creative Writing." He wants to teach them to write stories. How they all reach their limits can be seen in "Südstadthelden", an 86-minute documentary.
"Südstadthelden" is the story of Kathi, Omar, Nadine, Alida and Giselle. They live in Nuremberg, their parents are Turkish, Russian or Italian. About the quarter in which they live, they say: There is almost nothing in the Südstadt except foreigners, in class 3 out of 24 students are German. The Südstadt, the children say, many people think bad. What leads out of this place?
The movie begins when Fassnacht, 31, enters the school. He wants to write texts with the children from the Südstadt, open a door: for all the frustration, for the anger on the teachers, for life.
"He wants to make jokes, but the jokes are bad"
Kathi, Omar and the others are volunteering. However, for some people, such as Fassnacht, who sits down in the classroom and writes poetry, is only embarrassing. "He's not like us," says Kathi in the film. "He wants to joke, but the jokes are bad, and I think: Okay, you're not from our district."
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Nadine (l.) And Kathi from "Südstadthelden": "You are not from our district"
At the next meeting, students might not find Fassnacht's jokes any better, but they've come back. The task today: "Try in three lines to say everything that people should know about you," says Fassnacht. Omar shows up as if he is about to have a nervous breakdown, everyone clucking. When Fassnacht comes home in the evening, he is quite through. "I'm angry because they think they can provoke me," he says in the film.
Trust, from afternoon to afternoon
For Fassnacht, these children are still heroes. They are his South-Eastern heroes, to whom he builds a relationship from afternoon to afternoon. Although the five "take half an hour for each sentence," as Fassnacht notes in a meeting with them, he continues the meetings. When the children squirm, he says calmly, "Write that down as a story."
A small team around AG-leader Fassnacht has produced the film, without the participation of a broadcaster. This is how you want to avoid time pressure, says the production company. The project cost 55,000 euros, the money drove the team through crowdfunding and public funding.
In the summer of 2015, the two-year shooting began. Four years later, in October, the film is now celebrating its premiere at the Nuremberg Human Rights Festival. Whether he will come to theaters afterwards or be seen on YouTube, the makers are currently clarifying.
"It often came up during the shooting, the question of whether this ever leads anywhere," says Fassnacht the SPIEGEL. He has published several books and regularly gives writing workshops at secondary schools. Over several sessions, the students did not participate, he had to be very patient. "But not giving voice to these children would be dramatic, that's why I wanted to do the film."
Walls to endure themselves
For the audience, as the documentation progresses, it goes deeper and deeper into the psychic life of the students. There are wounds, disappointments down there. It hurts to watch.
There's Kathi, with nasal piercing and curls being teased: she gets insulted by other girls as a "senior student" on the street after school, she says in the movie. Her aggression let them out while dancing. Or just hit it.
There's Alida, who keeps grinning and has a "new dad," she says.
There's Omar, a brown-eyed boy who keeps shouting, "Is not it all shit, man." Behind such sentences, students hide behind walls, helping to endure their own biographies.
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Scene from "Südstadthelden": So much to be proud of
The course quickly becomes more, as this film shows. Fassnacht goes to eat with the kids doner kebab, he travels with them on a small bus through Germany, takes them on poetry slams. The children marvel at big stages, look behind scenes. Anyone who dares presents one of his texts. Everyone likes the feeling: blazing applause, to be seen.
A question like a lightning strike
In between, Fassnacht wants Kathi, Omar and the others to know how they are doing. It's a question that can feel like a lightning strike when you rarely have to answer it. Yes, this life can be shit, says the film, but there is so much to be proud of. These children have plans, they have hope. You just have to ask them.
But outside, outside of Fassnacht's course, these kids are not heroes to most. But senior students. It is this stamp that clings to them and cement their roles in society. What a pity the young people themselves can summarize more accurately than any educational analyst: "If the kids in the secondary school are smarter, they should not go to high school." What's that shit? "Asks Omar.
Fassnacht is unlike many people around the students, because he does not go away. A faithful person in five lives full of uncertainties and breaks. It is moving how unselfishly he endures the students, their nagging, without reproach. He, whose job it is to make art into language, is faced with five young people who are sometimes hard to understand: they mumble, simply let sentences break off or bubble out at double the speed.
Fassnacht comes closer to the students because he uses a language that they can use to get along. This language does not sound like ridiculously fine, inaccessible adult High German, but like Rap: Poetry Slam has rhythm, consists of hasty sentences, staccato style. A language that does not embarrass you when you swallow a word.
At the end of the film, the children slam their lyrics in front of 500 spectators. The stories are about mothers and fathers, about types that kidnap girls and about tears in dark rooms. "He motivates a full stop," says Kathi now about her mentor Fassnacht, who is now no longer embarrassing. "It shows that it's not just certain people who have talents."
Criticism of the sitter himself
It remains to be hoped that the adolescents will see it later. There are always documentary films that accompany adolescents a bit through their lives - impressive films, but the creators have to put up with the question of whether they show their still very young protagonists.
After 2007, for example, the much-acclaimed film "Prinzessinenbad" was published, a documentary about the growing up of three girls in Berlin-Kreuzberg, there was then criticism - by the sitter itself.
They would have cried and screamed when they saw the movie for the first time, the three girls later told a journalist from the Berliner Zeitung. They had been shocked by the scenes and dialogues that had been cut for the film.
"Respect is above everything"
Lucas Fassnacht comments: Before anyone saw the finished film "Südtstadthelden", the team introduced him to the children and their parents. "He arrived great, it's just not just the weaknesses of the children shown, but mine," says the author to the SPIEGEL. To be able to film at all, the team has obtained signatures from parents. "It was clear to us from the beginning that respect is above everything."
Respect means that this film teaches people not to give up. Fassnacht even takes Omar seriously when he completely refuses to work on one of his texts. "If you keep this up, I'll throw you out of my class," says Fassnacht in the film to him. "When I go out, everyone goes out," Omar mocks. "It's your project, not mine," says Fassnacht. A few seconds pass. Then Omar picks up the pen and continues writing.
