Lollipop Monster

Colour, 35 mm
Germany, 2011, 96 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

Ari and Oona. Two 15-year-old girls, two dysfunctional families. Absolute opposites and yet somehow similar. No one listens, no one hears. Ari feels she is misunderstood and compensates for this by having sex with unknown men; Oona expresses the pain over her beloved father’s suicide through self-mutilation and morbid drawings. Opposites attract. Ari is a blonde who paints herself up like a canary, Oona loves things as black as night. Their unlikely friendship helps them survive the hypocrisy of their families. Ari finally gains some kind of self-respect, and Oona learns to give vent to her pain. Then something happens that threatens their friendship at its very roots.... The scope of the debuting director’s creative interests is evident both in the mix of cinematic devices that enrich the narration (animated passages, amateur film recordings, music videos), as well as in the artistic stylization, which directly references her grounding in comics.

About the director

Ziska Riemann (b. 1973, Munich) published her first graphic novel with Gerhard Seyfried in 1991. After putting out five more co-authored novels, she went solo in 1997 with Rascal & Lucille. In 1999 she created the internet comics magazine Dr. Inka & Colores, a forum for young comics artists. Besides her work on graphic novels, Riemann writes short stories and film scripts. In 1999/2000 she won a scholarship to the screenwriters’ workshop in Munich, and a year later she received the Tankred Dorst award for her script Blame It on the Dogs (Die Hunde sind schuld), which was realized in 2000 by ARD TV station. In 2004, she founded MerMer records, releasing her solo album Wo hier bitte geht’s nach Shambhala? as well as the work of other artists. She directed several short films between 2003 and 2010. Lollipop Monster is her feature debut.