Der Preis

Architect Alexander Beck has won a prize with an ambitious project for the conversion of prefabricated buildings in Thuringia. He travels from Frankfurt am Main to the East German province and behaves like a foreign, outsider designer: blocks of houses are to be torn down or modernized, a residential district is to be given a new look according to his plans. Nothing more. But the longer he is at the real construction site, the more difficult it becomes for him to maintain his usual professional distance. After all, the small town in Thuringia is Alex` hometown, and the apartment blocks are those in which he grew up.

Memories that the architect initially wants to avoid gradually break their way during his stay. They lead back to his youth in the GDR, to the year 1988, to the story of the bitter end of a friendship: Alex and the brother and sister Michael and Nicole have been an inseparable trio since childhood. Shortly before graduation, however, the rather system-compliant FDJ secretary Alex and the provocative, loner athlete Michael suddenly find themselves as irreconcilable opponents. At the same time that Nicole and Alex are tentatively falling in love, the rift between the boys grows painfully deep. Alex, who admires the siblings for their apparent independence, finally makes an effort to talk things out. When he is rejected by Michael, also because of his affection for Nicole, the hurt Alex betrays his friend.

There was and is no opportunity to make up for this debt, because Michael took his own life at the end of his school years. Only in today’s vis-a-vis of the familiar concrete buildings, in conversation with a new colleague, and above all in the re-encounter with Nicole, who still lives in their shared hometown, does Alex find his way back to a long-repressed part of his biography.

Credits

Cast:
Florian Panzner, Anne Kanis, Wiebke Bachmann, Guntbert Warns, Sven Gielnik, Vanessa Krüger, Vincent Krüger

Screenplay: Peggy Lehmann
Director: Elke Hauck
Camera: Michael Kotschi
Editing: Stefan Stabenow
Production design: Angelica Böhm
Costume: Sonja Hesse
Make up: Jana Schulze
Sound: Johannes Doberenz
Production Management: Olaf Kirbach
Production management: Michal Pokorny
Producer: Martin Lehwald, Marcos Kantis, Michal Pokorny
Commissioning Editor: SWR, Stefanie Groß

Supporters: Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, German Federal Film Fund, German Federal Film Board, The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

Production year: 2011

Preise
  • Prize of the German-Polish Youth Jury “Best German Film”, Film Festival Lubuskie Lato Filmowe Lagow 2011
  • Thuringian Award for the Promotion of Building Culture 2012
Festivalteilnahmen
  • Berlinale (perspective)
  • Lubuskie Lato Filmowe Lagow
  • Vancouver Int. Film Festival
  • Braunschweig Film Festival
  • Dhaka Int. Film Festival
Scene from The Price
Scene from The Price
Scene from The Price
Scene from The Price