System Crasher

System Crasher (2019)

Systemsprenger

Wherever 9-year-old Benni ends up, she is expelled. She has become what child protection services call a “system crasher.” But she is not looking to change her ways, and has one goal: go back home to her mother. When anger management trainer Micha is hired to help, suddenly there is hope.

Date of release
2019-09-19
TMDB
7.6 / 10 (410)
Runtime
1h 58m
Genres
Drama
Director
Nora Fingscheidt

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 8 · Nominations: 4. Including: European Film Award for Best Composer; German Film Award for Best Feature Film; German Film Award for Best Direction; German Film Award for Best Screenplay

System Crasher is a 2019 German drama film directed by Nora Fingscheidt.

Development

System Crasher is Nora Fingscheidt’s first fiction feature film as director. Her attention was first drawn to the theme while filming the documentary Das Haus neben den Gleisen (2014) with Simone Gaul, which depicts life in a refuge for homeless women in Stuttgart. Among the women Fingscheidt met there was a fourteen-year-old girl, who as a system crasher was no longer accepted by any institution in the youth welfare service.

Fingscheidt wrote the screenplay after five years of research during which she lived or worked in residential groups, in a school for educational support, an emergency accommodation centre and a child psychiatry unit. She talked to staff at institutions and agencies as well as child and youth psychologists. Fingscheidt says she made System Crasher to raise awareness of severely traumatised children like Benni.

The Berlin child actor Helena Zengel was chosen for the lead role. Of the 150 or so girls Fingscheidt considered, Zengel made the shortlist of ten right from the start: the filmmaker kept coming back to her. According to Fingscheidt she was the only child who could portray the aggression together with the distress: “There was never anything merely spoilt or cheeky; it was always combined with fragility and vulnerability.”

In preparation for System Crasher Zengel’s mother read the screenplay with her daughter and six months before starting filming, Fingscheidt began working with the girl to ensure compatibility in the casting of even the smallest supporting roles. During the filming itself, lines and scenes were rehearsed with Zengel a day in advance.

Filming took place in coproduction with Kleinen Fernsehspiel from ZDF in Hamburg, Lüneburger Heide and Berlin. The Weydemann Bros. GmbH, Kineo Filmproduktion and Oma Inge Film production was shot from 7 November 2017 to 27 March 2018.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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