Peppermint Frieden

Summary

Peppermint Peace

The story of a post-war childhood in rural Bavaria. Marianne is five in 1945, when she and her ethnic German parents arrive in Straubing as displaced persons from Terezín in then Czechoslovakia. Her father, a former soldier in the German army, returns to his pre-war occupation as a teacher. Under permanent rebuke from the village priest, Marianne and her friends are curious about religion and sex. They are especially fascinated by an American GI. Part of the occupation forces, he starts up an affair with a pretty neighbour, while generously distributing chewing gum to the town's children. So for them, peace (Frieden) tastes of peppermint. But the preacher's constant sermons about the evil of the Soviet "Ivans" awaken in Marianne memories of the trauma of war, which intensify when "Mr Peace" receives orders to go to Korea.

In neo-realistic scenes and colourful dream sequences, the film uses idiosyncratic camerawork to look at Cold War taboos from a child's point of view. Made in 1983, during the era of rearmament debates, Marianne Rosenbaum's alternative take on history in this Heimatfilm, with its Bavarian and American star cast, can be considered a political statement.

Quelle: 69. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Katalog)