Germany 2017
Opening June 29, 2017
Directed by: Helene Hegemann
Writing credits: Helene Hegemann
Principal actors: Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Arly Jover, Mavie Hörbiger, Laura Tonke, Julius Feldmeier
Mifti (Bauer) is a 16-year-old girl who lives with her half-siblings Anika (Tonke) and Edmond (Feldmeier) in a Berlin apartment. Her mother has died and her father is useless, only interested in living a rich life in a mansion with a new girlfriend. Thus, at an age, when a teenager needs guidance, Mifti is on her own; she learns about life through actually living it. Two “helpers” along the way are Ophelia (Hörbiger), an actress doing volunteer work at her school cafeteria, and Alice (Jover), another “older” woman, whom Mifti met in a super market. Both women have their own problems of low self-esteem and harmful addictions.
This is director Helene Hegemann’s first film and is more or less based on her book Axolotl Roadkill, published in 2010. Hegemann said that she never thought she would make the film. However, she was disappointed that people did not see the deeper intentions behind the book and decided that this would be a second opportunity to set some superficial impressions right. She said that it is “not a coming of age story, but just the opposite…it is not about a certain generation or the border between generations, but the dissolution of borders between sexes, rich and poor, old and young.”
An axolotl, also known as a Mexican salamander, and slowly becoming extinct due to environmental changes in Mexico, is especially interesting because it has neoteny, a trait present in some animals as well as some humans, characterized as “a slowing or delaying of physical development.” Physically it looks like a child, while mentally coping with survival as an adult.
Mifti lets it all hang out. She quits school, stays up late dancing, drinking, driving, smoking, nightclubbing, quitting school, and spontaneously interacting with her family, as well as strangers. The action jumps from one location to the next; sometimes it appears to be more of a happening than a real film with a real plot. Halfway through I thought, “Why should I care for these people?” In the end I decided that another title could be, “A Few Days in the Life of Mifti,” which, then, could be “A Few Days in the Life of Me,” as we are all Miftis in some way. This is definitely a film to discuss and a chance to enjoy excellent German actors, who, in a few scenes, speak some English. Axolotl Overkill premiered at the Sundance film festival, where cameraman Manuel Dacosse won the Special Jury Award for Cinematography. ()