From its opening shot, Detlev Buck's Tough Enough is as uncompromising as its title suggests, another example of the emerging power of new German filmmaking.
Fifteen-year-old Michael Polischka gets a rude awakening when his mother breaks up with her rich doctor boyfriend. With little money of her own, she's forced to move them into a dumpy apartment in a rough ethnic neighbourhood, far from the posh suburbs in which they had grown accustomed to living. Beatings and extortion make public high school miserable for Michael. Life at home isn't much better.
A chance meeting with urbane crime lord Hamal and his henchman, Barut, turns Michael's life around. They take him under their wing, in part because his honest face makes him the perfect guy for drug deliveries to local dealers. But when a big delivery goes astray, Polischka is obliged to provide Hamal with some new proof of his loyalty… and this time the test won't just involve money.

Winner of Berlin's Panorama Fipresci prize.