Germany, 1946. Young Charlotte (fantastic: Laura Balzer) who speaks to the film audience, her “sisters“, in voice-over, is pregnant. Returning soldier and father-to-be Ludwig doesn‘t want to have anything to do with a child and gives her money for an abortion. She signs up to a “Fräuleinkurs“ run Gloria Deven (Valery Tscheplanova), who was a successful actress in the Nazi era and is now banned from working. In the mysterious theater “Proto,“ the harsh Gloria dedicates herself to the young women and teaches them what they have to do so that men “can finally see“ in a taboo-breaking and ruthless way. In reality, this is about something more important for Gloria: female self-empowerment. A sisterly solidarity develops between the five course participants. Soon they are chanting Gloria‘s slogan: “no scruples, no mercy with men!“

With TRÜMMERMÄDCHEN – DIE GESCHICHTE DER CHARLOTTE SCHUMANN, which premiered at the Hofer Filmtagen in 2021, Oliver Kracht made his thesis film which won him the Thomas Strittmatter Prize for Best Screenplay. Kracht upends all expectations about stories featuring “Trümmerfrauen,“ and makes a theatrical firework that switches between color and black and white, the past and the present, archival footage and meta levels, with film characters suddenly reading the screenplay. When the “sisterly union“ of the five young women spray colorful, emancipatory slogans on the city walls, one wonders what would‘ve happened if the “Trümmerfrauen“ wouldn‘t have been forced back into a patriarchal society after the war. TRÜMMERMÄDCHEN shows tough feminism in post-war Germany – often grotesque, violent and in need of getting used to, but most of all, brilliant.

Stefanie Borowsky

Translation: Elinor Lewy