Based on the true account of a young Christiane Felscherinow, Amazon Prime’s new German TV series follows the forgotten generation of West Berlin children who spent their days in hotspots of drug addiction and underage prostitution. This isn’t the first time this story has been shared with viewers, and if you haven’t heard this story before, this series is a cleaner gateway to unravelling the story of Christiane F.
The original film, Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (Uli Edel) was released in 1981 and featured a performance cameo and soundtrack by David Bowie. Without Bowie’s name in this, perhaps global press attention could have reduced the film to merely a low-budget West German film about troubled teenagers. With scenes of real life prostitutes, drug addicts and a cast of mostly young first-time actors who were still at school, one thing is certain: a film like this couldn’t have been made in 2022.
Although dates are not exactly clear, We Children from Bahnhof Zoo is supposed to be set in the same time as the original film and book: the late 1970s. This was a time where West Berlin was walled off and isolated by the Iron Curtain.
Each episode is about 50 minutes long and follows a group of teenage friends: Christiane, Stella, Benno, Axel, Babsi and Michi. Their lives revolve around Berlin’s ‘Zoologischer Garten’ Station and the party scene at SOUND discotheque – a real club which, at the time, was described as the most modern in Europe. SOUND was known for heavy drug use and several attempts to rebrand and clean its image couldn’t deter its drug addict crowd. As the club is such a central part of We Children of Bahnhof Zoo and, you might already have a sense of where this is going…
Without revealing too much, similarities in the new We Children of Bahnhof Zoo can be drawn from TV shows like the British drama series Skins and HBO’s popular show Euphoria, where they also follow the lives of young teenagers getting into all kinds of debauchery. Family dysfunction, peer pressure, partying and drug addiction play a central role in these television programmes, while their cinematic counterparts that include drug abuse in adolescence such as Thirteen (2003) and the original Christiane F. (1981) have achieved cult status.
Despite the cast being much older, We Children of Bahnhof Zoo doesn’t glamorise drug abuse and the activities the characters involve themselves in. The series doesn’t devote itself to portraying the late 1970s either with music genres and dance styles oscillating from 1970 to 2020. If this is something you look for in an adaptation, the original film might be a better watch for you.
Nadia Cheung 