Planet Alex

Analogous to Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Schüppel has created with Planet Alex a fascinating, apocalyptic portrait of an era in Berlin using a network of characters. At a rapid tempo, within a time-span of 24 hours, he combines the storylines of each character into a tight and atmospheric unity. He chooses a few from all the people who move on, under or around the square every day, between Fernsehturm and U-Bahn. Asaki, an Internet artist who has adopted the name of a manga figure, finds herself embroiled in ‘eso terrorism’. Anna is a respectable girl who comes to Berlin for a weekend to live it up but realises that nothing will change her mediocrity. Katja is about to break through internationally as a model and is waiting for the right moment. These characters meet each other, lose sight of each other and meet again.The apparently diffuse centre of the city is portrayed from close by in a compelling rhythm. The film seems to surf through all kinds of genres, from krimi to comedy, from fairytale to psycho-thriller. Berlin Alexanderplatz emerges as an independent solar system, in which the ball of the Fernsehturm is the sun around which everything revolves.The visual aesthetic of the film is determined by the use of a small DV camera, the recordings of which were then processed and copied to 35mm film. The result has a miraculous transparency that boosts the feeling of realism.