With 300,000 inhabitants, Berlin’s Neukölln district is not only one of Germany’s largest “cities”, but also its largest employment and social welfare office. Alongside the traditionally working-class district’s native German population, there is a high proportion of foreign residents. Neukölln is considered a problem district and not particularly livable. But the Neukölln inhabitants whom Bernhard Sallmann followed are happy to live here. Through the perspectives, memories and lifestyles of Sallmann’s unspectacular “heroes”, an image of cohabitation in Neukölln emerges that belies the spectacular headlines. Sallmann records the movements and rhythms of the district, creating a formal, complex “neighborhood mythology” with various layers.

Neukölln occasionally reminds of Brooklyn, that enormous, seemingly dreary borough languishing in relative obscurity in the shadow of the glittering, blossoming Manhattan. But culturally speaking, the shadow borough Brooklyn acts as a secret drive wheel for its more prominent brother, a nutrient-rich reservoir into which the glittering world has thrust its roots, for it is in the humus of the subculture that the protagonists thrive who keep the city moving. A curiosity to explore these hidden food chains within large metropolises is palpable in Bernhard Sallmann’s Berlin-Neukölln. His film mixes both individual and formal approaches, its intentions both artistic and ethnological.

Director: Bernhard Sallmann
Writer: Bernhard Sallmann
Cinematographer: Susanne Schüle
Editor: Ulrich Sackenreuter
Sound: Klaus Barm
Commissioning editor: Burkhard Althoff
Producer: Gunter Hanfgarn
Co-producer: ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel
Channel: ZDF