TROUBLE

A street smart blast from the Berlin underground, Trouble comes as a welcome respite from the ponderous state of most current German cinema. Yet this is a reunification story too, a bulletin from the rock/rap culture barricades of the old/new capital's long established Kreuzberg scene, now under threat from real-estate speculators.

Jonnie is a 20-something black woman from Canada who works in a bar and plays in a band. She is taunted due to her colour, frustrated by the slow route to recognition of her songwriting and disturbed by the rapidly changing nature of the new Berlin. When the band is evicted from their rehearsal room and their Turkish bass player attacked by neo-Nazis, Jonnie and her friends dig their heels in even further in an attempt to halt the disappearance of the Berlin they know. When the romantically reluctant Jonnie meets Erik, a streetwise Mr. Fix-it involved with a subversive political group, their mutual interests (not to mention desires) mesh.