Synopsis
Alex is a 16-year-old misfit, a school drop-out - she´s been using drugs, cutting herself and is a general failure. Now, her adoptive mother has put her in an internship at a Northern German farm to work with horses, as her last chance to find a balance in life. There she meets Nina, her teacher, a 30-something lesbian, a horse lover, who needs a break from her partner Christine and their city-life. After Alex hates being at this remote farm in the middle of nowhere, she slowly connects with the horses. Then, an upper-class girl, Kathy, arrives at the farm for a vacation with her own beautiful horse. At first Alex dislikes privileged Kathy, but slowly the unlike girls start a friendship: Kathy becomes smitten by streetwise and energetic Alex. They do silly things together like playing in the mud at the ocean. One weekend they´re alone at the farm and things get out of control. A coming-of-age story with girls and horses in the stark environment at the most Northern tip of Germany at the ocean near the Danish border.
Director Biography
Monika Treut is a German filmmaker born in 1954. She studied German and political science at university. Treut started working with video while in university, working at media centers in Marburg, Frankfurt, and Berlin, where she organized film screenings and helped produce video documentaries. In 1984, she earned a doctorate degree in philology from the University of Marburg and set up the production company Hyäne I/II Filmproduktion with Elfie Mikesch.
Treut’s is famous for her queer films, which broach taboo subjects of sexuality such as S&M, lesbianism, transsexualism, and transgender experience. Critics have compared her aesthetic to that of Fassbender or Araki. She has received numerous prizes at the Turin International Film Festival, at the Mix Festival in Brazil’s São Paulo, and at Berlin’s Teddy-Jury.
Monika Treut