In the new German cinema film Sonne und Beton, four boys experience the summer of their lives on the hard pavement of Neukölln. The film by David Wnendt (Wetlands) is based on the novel of the same name by comedian and podcaster Felix Lobrecht. But is sun and concrete a true story or fictional?
What is the movie about?
Lobrecht’s debut novel was published in 2017 and the plot roughly corresponds to that of the film: Lukas (Levy Rico Arcos), Julius (Vincent Wiemer), Gino (Rafael Luis Klein-Hessling) and Sanchez (Aaron Maldonado Morales) live in Berlin-Gropiusstadt, a district in the south of Neukölln. The high-rise settlement has been considered a social hot spot for decades, as it was in 2003, the year in which the film and novel are set.
In the district, the kids oscillate between stress and boredom. Dirty parks, droppings and shards are part of their everyday life, but the heat wave makes summer even more unbearable, also because they have no money for the swimming pool. When they try to earn some extra money selling weed, they get caught between enemy dealers. Lukas is beaten up and has to pay protection money of 500 euros. A sum that he obviously does not own. Sanchez has the solution: Why not steal the school’s new computers and peddle them?
Does sun and concrete tell a true story?
The short answer: Sun and Concrete does not tell a true story, but was inspired by true experiences.
The long answer: Felix Lobrecht moved from Mettingen to Berlin with his father and siblings in the 1990s. He grew up in Gropiusstadt, he was part of the milieu portrayed in films and novels. When his book was published (on Amazon *) in 2017, Lobrecht was asked whether and to what extent he processed true events. In an interview with Deutschlandfunk at the time, he explained: sun and concrete is not autobiographical, but it contains “true elements”:
I’m not Lukas, but I recognize myself in some way in many of the actors in the book.
Constantine
The four friends in sun and concrete
In the press release for the film, Lobrecht explains: “It’s not an autobiography”. He is further quoted as follows:
It’s not my story in the sense of: This is my life story. Many things that appear in the book and now also happen in the film, I have personally experienced. But just as many things are fictitious. I have always left open what is true and what is not. I’ll leave it at that. But I was only able to write many scenes in the book in such a way that they would work later because I had pictures in my mind. Obviously, I know the area where the book is set well and I’ve always seen the exact locations while writing. So Sonne und Beton does not tell a true story, all the characters have made-up names and the hero Lukas is not a simple alter ego of Felix Lobrecht. However, individual events could have happened in one way or another. Only the author himself knows what these are.
*. . .