Solo Sunny

Sunny is a pop singer from Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district who spends her time playing gigs at small venues in the villages and small towns of the GDR. Admired and desired by men but by no means understood by them, she winds up in hospital after swallowing a hefty cocktail of sleeping pills and alcohol. This social misfit's dreams of 'going solo' in life are constantly thwarted by the expectations of the society in which she lives. Wolfgang Kohlhaase and Konrad Wolf make use of this dialectic to create a compelling contemporary drama. The film's obvious bias towards the protagonist and her determination to realise a personal dream unleashed a controversial debate when it was premiered in the GDR. (Berlinale)