Unterm Staub der Zeit

Fourteen-year-old Daniel comes to Berlin in 1958 from his East German hometown, where as the son of a pastor he is denied the Abitur. He moves into a dormitory in Grunewald, where he also attends grammar school, and quickly settles into his new surroundings. With his roommates - all of whom, like him, come from the GDR - he not only attends school, but they also explore the city together: as newspaper vendors, they wander through the pubs every evening, and when the food in the dormitory tastes too bland, they go for pea soup in Aschinger's "Stehbierhalle". They experience the revivalist Billy Graham, who sends the masses in the Tiergarten into raptures, and Bill Haley, who brings the Sportpalast to a boil.
Director and songwriter Wenzel about the novel Unterm Staub der Zeit: "In times when East and West were still more than two points of the compass, it happened that disagreeable pupils or children of disagreeable parents in East Germany were not allowed to take the Abitur. With all kinds of skill, an alternative grammar school place was organised for them in West Berlin. The clash of the two empires now happened in the boarding school, in the classroom and in the cinema halls. The novel tells of this and of the absurdity of this story.".