Christiane F.

Adapted from actor and musician Christiane Felscherinow’s harrowing account of her teenage years, CHRISTIANE F. depicts the impact of West Berlin’s 1970s 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 the trendy 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 scene, director Uli Edel unflinchingly captures the degradation of each phase of junkie life, from the brutal withdrawals to the seemingly endless vows to “go straight.” Bowie himself appears in a concert performance of “Station to Station,” and the film’s soundtrack is both a virtual compendium of the epochal musician’s celebrated Berlin period and a perfect sonic evocation of nightclubbing’s dark side.

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