North Sea Is Dead Sea (Nordsee ist Mordsee)

 

Writer/director Hark Bohm

Bohm and Fassbinder (far left) in 1971

NORTH SEA IS DEAD SEA (Nordsee ist Mordsee)                       B+                          Germany  (87 mi)  1976  d: Hark Bohm

I often dream of stealing a sailboat
And simply taking off
I don't know where to yet
The main thing is that I am no longer at home
It just doesn't work with the old folks anymore.

Now let’s see
How far the journey takes us
And where the wind blows me
There must be a place somewhere
For a really wild life
And that's where I want to be now.

—Udo Lindenberg, 1976, Udo Lindenberg - Ich träume oft davon, ein Segelboot zu klau'n ... YouTube (3:17)

A coming-of-age movie from the 70’s when the Federal Republic of Germany was still a divided country, but this child-forward film is considered a classic of German youth cinema, made during a time when hardly anyone was making films for children or young people, yet this film is notable for offering unique insight into teen malaise, realistically capturing social hardships and a yearning for freedom, portraying events realistically, without sensationalizing or embellishment, where the documentary style realism is what gives the film its power, creating a genuine emotional impact, leaving a mark for being authentic, immediate, and uncommonly intimate.  Made by German filmmaker Hark Bohm, one of the early collaborators of New German Cinema who is still better known as one of the staple actors for Rainer Werner Fassbinder, where he maintained a lifelong creative partnership, appearing in a dozen of his films in the 70’s and 80’s, including THE AMERICAN SOLDIER (1970), ALI:  FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974), FEAR OF FEAR (1975), THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1979), THE THIRD GENERATION (1979), BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980), LILI MARLEEN (1981), and LOLA (1981), playing memorable supporting characters, often bringing a stark, realist gravity to Fassbinder’s intense psychological and social dramas.  Yet he was also a widely experienced and altogether unusual filmmaker in his own right, though his largely independent films were rarely screened abroad, many of them featuring his numerous adopted and foster children in starring roles.  Cofounding the Filmmakers’ Film Festival (Filmfest der Filmemacher) in 1979 with Werner Herzog, Volker Schlöndorff, and Wim Wenders, which gave rise to modern independent film funding in Germany, Bohm studied law and was also a university professor at the University of Hamburg, where he inaugurated the school’s film studies program, promoting film literacy, while acting as a vital bridge between the radical postwar generation of German auteurs and modern filmmakers, mentoring talent like German-Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin.  Written and directed by Bohm, this film focuses on young people’s everyday lives, starring his own adopted son Uwe Bohm as 14-year old Uwe, a freckle-faced kid living at home in a dysfunctional family with his working mother (Herma Koehn) and abusive, alcoholic father (Marquard Bohm, the director’s younger brother) in a dreary Hamburg high-rise housing project.  His deadbeat dad drowns his sorrows in alcohol, regularly beating both Uwe and his mother, creating plenty of unreleased, inner rage in Uwe, venting his frustrations in a series of petty crimes and bullying that he commits with a small gang he leads, starting in the schoolyard, where together they terrorize fellow misfits with derogatory racist taunts, particularly an Asian student with no friends and no father, Dschingis (Dschingis Bowakow, biological son of the director’s wife, raised as their foster son), cruelly described as a “wog,” a “foreigner,” and a “slit-eyed outsider.”  Among the many charms of the film is that it is largely spoken in Hamburg slang, which differs significantly from standard German, making it difficult to comprehend even for native Germans, much like Andrea Arnold, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, and Lynne Ramsay in British cinema.

While a beloved film in Germany, it is practically unknown in North America, so this is a film that deserves rescue from oblivion.  Bohm lived in the region for three months prior to filming to research the subject and develop the screenplay with his actors, creating something original and critical, yet what’s unique about the film is the prominent casting of family members, where the two starring roles are arch enemies played by the director’s own foster children, creating an unusual sense of intimacy that carries throughout the entire picture, reflecting a time when children had to cope with being alone on the street, where the brash attitude of punk rebellion from a child’s vantage point recalls Linda Manz in Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue (1980).  When we witness the xenophobic, bullying behavior of the gang, it recalls those self-absorbed kids from Fassbinder’s KATZELMACHER (1969), which was notable for the way he arranges a group of disaffected and bored young people a little differently each time in a line facing the camera, returning to this same image frequently, a highly stylized way to project venomous racist hatred, like a Greek chorus, evolving out of his own play, which transfigures a cinema of poverty into bleakly triumphant rites of despair.  Set in Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg, the second largest city after Berlin, known as a multicultural, vibrant neighborhood with a mix of industrial history, creative art scenes, and green spaces, crossed by hundreds of canals connecting the Elbe River to the North Sea.  Much of this film is spent on the waterways, which is a distinctly different approach, creating a completely different visual landscape, beautifully shot by Wolfgang Treu, capturing several sunsets over the sea.  Evolving out of the harsh, unforgiving environment, Uwe and his gang break into a slot machine, but Uwe keeps the money for himself, which leads to disgruntled friends, who wait in vain for their cut.  Instead, he buys a switchblade, but on the way back from the store, he notices Dschingis building a raft out of scrap wood.  The next day Dschingis finds his raft destroyed, with the gang looking on, again taunting him with vile racist disdain, prompting an angry attack, with Dschingis thoroughly outnumbered, but he fights them off, and a dual ensues between Uwe and Dschingis, who ultimately prevails, causing the others to flee.  Dschingis forces Uwe to help him repair his raft.  In an attempt to repair the damage with his gang, still waiting for their cut from the robbery, and in an attempt to save face after losing the fight, finding his leadership in question, Uwe steals a car, but his joyride is cut short before the police catch him, returning him home to his father, who brutally beats him afterwards, nearly killing him, leaving him scarred and bandaged.  A raw and skillfully written social study of growing up in an impoverished working-class neighborhood of troubled youth and generational conflict, the two boys eventually overcome their animosity and bond over shared feelings of alienation, realizing that they have the same dysfunctional family problems and social burdens, with Dschingis eventually standing up for him. 

With visible signs of abuse on his battered face, Uwe decides to skip school, asking Dschingis, of all people, to notify the school for him, meeting up afterwards, refusing to go back home, wondering if he can stay with Dschingis, but his mother (Natalia Bowakow, the director’s wife) refuses, claiming it’s against the law to illegally hide a child, which only infuriates Dschingis, both of them commiserating on what to do, where they decide to run away together.  In short order this becomes a buddy hangout movie, as the second half shifts into a compelling, heartfelt adventure as the two abused and bullied boys form an unlikely alliance.  Using the repaired raft, they set out from the Port of Hamburg, but the homemade contraption proves too slow and cumbersome, finding themselves precariously positioned between tugboats, freighters, and much bigger ships that nearly run them over or capsize them, where they stand out like sitting ducks, so Uwe decides to steal a much faster dingy, which allows them swifter movement from the wind in the sails as they continue heading down the Lower Elbe, spending the night along the banks of the river, where in the morning light they find themselves near the Hahnöfersand Correctional Facility, a juvenile detention center, realizing those prisoners are hardly older than they are, suddenly imagining seeing themselves there.  Part of the controversy at the time was the film was rated unacceptable for viewers under age 16, due to the harsh depiction of reality, yet those same viewers could watch extremely violent action thrillers.  What this amounted to was political censorship based on outdated ideals about protecting children.  From stealing boats to knife-wielding stick-ups and kung-fu fights (both have Bruce Lee posters in their rooms), it’s difficult to watch the casual schoolyard racism and brutal honesty about 1970’s social environments, yet Bohm sustains a compelling theme of alienation.  As the two boys continue downstream, approaching where the mouth of the Elbe meets the North Sea, they are approached by a police boat, but manage to escape through the shallow reeds in a side channel, quickly abandoning their boat to hide onshore, breaking into a kiosk at night as they were desperately hungry, where the two of them resemble a modern day version of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, where life along the river presents everpresent dangers.  Forced to continually evade police with narrow escapes, the final shot is an image of their boat sailing down the river, seen against the setting sun, away from the hopelessness of everyday life, while a poetic refrain from Udo Lindenberg’s song leads from a blue sea to a black screen with no end credits, Ich träume oft davon, ein Segelboot zu klau'n // Udo Lindenberg YouTube (2:26).  Engaging and suspenseful, never resorting to a moralizing, yet artistically impactful, the film deals with the miserable living conditions suffered by many young people from the postwar working-class generation, becoming a believable adventure film that addresses the feelings of disaffected youth growing up without love.    

Note

Hark Bohm died of natural causes surrounded by his family at the age of 86 in November 2025.  

Amrum

 

Fatih Akin with Hark Bohm

Director Fatih Akin

Akin with Matthias Schweighöfer and Diane Kruger

Akin with Hark Bohm

Screenwriter Hark Bohm

AMRUM        B+                                                                                                                      Germany  (93 mi)  2025  d: Fatih Akin

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT                                                                                                      by Fatih Akin

Hark Bohm wrote a screenplay full of poetry, grace, and suspense — Amrum. When he realized that he would no longer be able to make the film himself, he asked me. I hesitated — after all, I am an auteur filmmaker who must always find a personal connection to the material. In any case, the screenplay had to be rewritten, as it was much too long. Since Hark writes everything by hand, his own revision would have taken too much time. I offered to take on the rewrite. Hark agreed. In the process, the story grew close to my heart. It was like adopting a child — at some point, you no longer question it, you simply love it unconditionally.

At first, I conceived the whole thing as an experimental film: how can I manage to shoot a Hark Bohm film? I revisited his work, analyzing his camera angles, his direction of actors, his editing — and above all, his attitude. But the closer the shoot approached, the more I realized that this was nonsense. I have to make my own film!

From that realization, everything started to fall into place. The films that came to mind when Hark first told me the story were Bicycle Thieves and Shoeshine by Vittorio De Sica. The scenes where Nanning searches for driftwood at night made me think of The Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton. The whole film was supposed to breathe the spirit of Stand by Me by Rob Reiner — thus, my cinematic upbringing became the first personal connection to the film. Others followed.

But the most important realization came to me shortly before completion earlier this year: friends who had been living in a kind of Disneyland version of Germany, have started talking about leaving the country. But Goethe said: "Where we are educated, there is our homeland." And I don't want to leave it to the Nazis.

Amrum tells of expulsion from paradise. For me, the film became a mission — a journey into the depths of my "German soul." Perhaps it was the last lesson that Master Hark Bohm taught me: cinema remains an eternal mystery.

There are very few films that accurately depict Nazi sympathizers with any degree of humanity, yet this is no ordinary film, introduced as “A Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin,” who adapts a first-time, autobiographical novel by the same name based on the childhood memories of German actor, author, and film director Hark Bohm, a long-standing friend of the director, most closely associated as an actor in a dozen films made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died just two months after the film was released.  Both deeply connected to Hamburg, Bohm originally intended to direct the movie himself, but his declining health forced him to hand over the project to Akin.  All the more emotionally powerful because of its dramatic restraint, there’s a lot of heart and soul in this picture, which distinguishes it from others, beautifully blending a tender coming-of-age story about the loss of innocence with the barbarism of the adult world, set against the waning days of the Third Reich, defined by a crushing ideological collapse and moral disorientation, becoming a painterly canvas that accentuates the psychological toll of the characters and thoughtfully expands filmmaker Fatih Akin’s career-spanning exploration of German identity.  Spending most of his career focused on non-ethnic Germans and their experience in German society, this is inspired by Hark Bohm’s own published autobiographical memories growing up as the son of a high-ranking Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) officer during the final days of World War II on Amrum, part of the sparsely populated North Frisian Islands in the North Sea.  It took considerable effort on the part of the entire country to acknowledge mistakes and correct the unspeakable historical sins of the past, where acknowledging guilt is part of a pervasive collective sentiment present in the German national consciousness to the point of becoming an essential part of its postwar identity, which has often been used to justify paradoxical positions, such as the unconditional defense of a genocidal state like Israel, using the memory of the Holocaust as a moral shield against any form of valid criticism or questioning.  With their home in Hamburg destroyed in an Allied bombing campaign, he and his family were forced to relocate to the safer environment of a quiet, rural island, joining others from the “mainland” who have evacuated from their bombed-out cities.  Given very limited distribution, told from the vantage point of twelve-year old Nanning (newcomer Jasper Billerbeck, who was discovered during a sailing training in Lower Saxony, though Bohm was actually only six at the time, too young for the conscientiously-evolving thoughts entrusted to him), who is living with his staunch Nazi-supporting mother Hille (Laura Tonke) in the later stages of pregnancy, his younger brother Macker (Tjard Nissen), and his Aunt Ena (Lisa Hagmeister), spending most of his time working in the potato fields of a nearby farm of Tessa (Diane Kruger), an ardent anti-fascist, who rewards him with milk and food for the chickens,  As a squadron of Allied bombers can be seen overhead, a new group of tattered refugees arrives by horse cart, as the Russians are reportedly only 50 kilometers from Berlin, mostly stared at as outsiders, and while they are treated differently, not really wanted or appreciated, they are all Germans. 

A quiet, atmospherically dense drama that is less politically than humanly told, remarkably distinct in its perspective, essentially a film about maturation, disappointment, and the search for a place in a world in upheaval, Akin beautifully establishes the daily rhythm of life on the tiny island, unraveling in small vignettes that have an accumulative power, becoming something uniquely different, yet also dramatically powerful, turning collective war trauma into a chamber play that is emotionally and psychologically complex.  Nanning has a nearby friend in Tessa’s son Hermann (Kian Köppke), about his same age, who borrows his copy of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, where they compare notes about what is considered an Amrumer islander, as they have their own language and history, with historical ties to Denmark, renowned as skilled whalers and seafarers, though today their economy has shifted almost entirely from seafaring to agriculture, sustainable tourism, and nature preservation, as the island sits within the protected Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park near the border with Denmark.  Offering freedom and adventure, Nanning hardly goes to school anymore, especially since he is teased there by the other children, who reject him for not being from Amrum and not speaking “their” northern Frisian dialect (the first movie to extensively feature Öömrang), as he was born in Hamburg, continually viewed as an outsider, just like the other war refugees, discovering, even from a child’s eyes, that hatred is part of the human condition.  His parents are fanatical Nazis, where a portrait of Adolf Hitler hangs on the wall in his kitchen, a swastika flag flies outside the house, with his mother being a Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM leader (female branch of the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany), his father a Nazi SS Officer who has written numerous books on eugenics, his Uncle Onno (Jan Georg Schütte) is a German Socialist Party board member on the neighboring island of Föhr, while Nanning himself is a member of the Hitler Youth, and proudly wears the uniform.  Caught up in the ambiguity of trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t align with what he’s been taught, Nanning learns about his parents’ hideous convictions and grotesque past, as Akin excels in slowly doling out information, heightening the disarmingly poetic visual style while prolonging the suspense.  One of the few figures Nanning can look up to is his Uncle Theo (Matthias Schweighöfer), who gifted him a whale’s tooth knife before he left for New York City (noting that more Amrumers live in New York City than there are on Amrum).  Over the course of the film, Nanning learns his Uncle Theo was exiled or estranged from the family because Nanning’s parents (and relatives) turned their backs and refused to help Theo’s Jewish fiancée escape a concentration camp, where she was subsequently murdered by the Nazis.  Nanning, of course, has little understanding of what any of this means, finding it hard to believe his parents would do something like that, facing difficult moral dilemmas without providing simple solutions, as the film centers on the child’s slowly realized recognition of his parents’ sin.

From the maker of HEAD-ON (2004), The Edge of Heaven (Auf Der Anderen Seite) (2007), and 2017 Top Ten List #9 In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts), which Bohm co-wrote, Akin’s films tend to be ambitious, raw, and emotionally explosive, where anger, pain, and rebellion simmer, exploring subjects like ethnic identity, immigration, and cultural conflict, yet this is a very different film, on a much smaller scale, calmer, unusually measured, more intimately spare and introspectively subdued, told through the warmth of a child’s eyes, where the massive sky and setting sun merge above the restless sea, with wind in the dunes and water everywhere, featuring plenty of scenes of animals in their natural environment, like beetles on blades of grass, waterfowl on the beach, honey bees, geese in flight, or desolate mudflat sequences that reveal what the tide has brought in, which feel more like poetic Terrence Malick touches. Cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub captures Amrum’s stark and unforgiving landscapes through expansive wide shots, often pulling back to reveal a vast, water-saturated terrain that feels suspended in time, with the island dotted with thatched cottages.  The film turns when Nanning innocently announces that he’s heard that the war may be over soon, where he’s excited about the prospects of seeing his father again, but his mother, a prisoner of her blind allegiance to Nazi ideology, sternly sets him straight, indicating this kind of talk only weakens the troop’s morale, as they are risking their lives every day fighting for the Fatherland, claiming whoever told him that deserves to be thoroughly punished.  Despite their hardships, Nanning’s life on the beautiful and windswept island is mostly idyllic, where his mother’s aggressive posture takes him by surprise, not really knowing what to make of it.  After hearing the actual news of Germany’s imminent defeat on the radio, followed shortly afterwards with Hitler’s demise, Hille takes a turn for the worse, falling into a deep depression, keeping to herself, refusing to eat, even after the birth of her child, realizing that the entire foundation of their beliefs, the very social structure that sustained them, is close to total collapse, emblematic of the collective trauma of the nation, wondering “What kind of world is this for a child to grow up in?”  All she talks about is wanting white bread with butter and honey, precious commodities that are nearly impossible to find, but that doesn’t stop Nanning from looking for them anyway, literally scouring the island, discovering it is filled with people responding to Germany’s impending defeat, with some relieved, some fearful, and some in denial.  In a succession of encounters that will highlight the fractures that tear this small society apart, caught up in the enclosed and restricted space, his entire family is viewed as strangers, treated with the prejudice and hostility normally reserved for foreigners, despite the fact they have owned a house on the island for countless generations, discovering how far removed their life is from the others who are not Nazi sympathizers and just want the war to be over, vehemently regarding his family as outsiders whose militaristic views are barely tolerated, as so many of their Amrumer neighbors have immigrant relatives fighting in the U.S. army.     

Akin presents a devastated and unstructured society comprised of convinced Nazis who cling to lies to the very end, war refugees forced to leave everything behind, people thirsting for personal revenge against the Nazi regime, and those who simply wished to be left alone, while addressing the issue of German collective guilt, the legacy of National Socialism, and the question of how this burden would continue to affect later generations.  On some of his adventures across the island he is joined by Hermann, whose mother is demonstrably anti-Hitler, but his grandfather, Grandpa Arjan (Lars Jessen), teaches Nanning how to gut and skin a rabbit, while also discovering his grandfather’s hidden radio tuned to foreign enemy stations that play American jazz, like Fred Astaire’s Cheek to Cheek, Fred Astaire - Cheek To Cheek 1935 (Leo Reisman) (Irving ... YouTube (3:17), or later after the war is over we hear the celebratory sounds of Louis Armstrong’s Stardust, Louis Armstrong- Stardust YouTube (3:34).  He also drops in on an old whaler, Sam Gangsters (Detlev Buck), who teaches him the seal dance, laying on the beach on his stomach while kicking his rear legs, luring seals in from the ocean where Sam can shoot them.  Nanning’s journey is interrupted by a group of war refugees who take advantage of their strength in numbers, stealing what he was gathering for his mother, while beating him up in the process.  Wearing his Hitler Youth uniform, he makes a bike crossing through the mudflats during low tide to visit his Uncle Onno on a neighboring island, seeking sugar for his mother, but he has to recite a Nazi pledge before his uncle will part with it.  Easily the most harrowing experience is his return back home, as the tide has risen, making passage nearly impossible, where he has to wade through water above his shoulders, holding the sugar over his head while steering the bike underwater, until eventually it is too much, where he has to swim, losing his aunt’s bike in the process, returning the next day for butter, only to be confronted by one of the bullies on the journey home, sending them both back into the sea, where Nanning actually ends up saving the other kid from drowning, much to his sister’s gratitude, calmly leaving afterwards with the butter intact.  He has a dream afterwards of meeting his Uncle Theo on the beach, protesting his innocence by stating, “What my parents did isn't my fault.”  His uncle reminds him, “You are not to blame, but you are still involved.”  You can’t choose your parents, but therein lies an underlying theme, that you cannot escape your past and the questions it raises, as Nanning’s emerging moral conscience suddenly awakes to the moral collapse around him, expressing an enduring need for compassion.  In a monumental tribute, set to the dreamlike soundtrack of Hainbach’s Amrum (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) YouTube (7:12), an experimental electronic composer, there is a close up at the end of Hark Bohm with the sun shining on his face, the grownup version of Nanning looking out into the ocean at the setting sun, who lived to see the release of the film, where Akin pays him the ultimate memorial tribute by breathing life into his final screenplay.