Peppermint-Frieden

The story of a post-war childhood in rural Bavaria. Marianne is five in 1945, when she and her ethnic German parents arrive in Straubing as displaced persons from Terezín in then Czechoslovakia. Her father, a former soldier in the German army, returns to his pre-war occupation as a teacher. Under permanent rebuke from the village priest, Marianne and her friends are curious about religion and sex. They are especially fascinated by an American GI. Part of the occupation forces, he starts up an affair with a pretty neighbour, while generously distributing chewing gum to the town’s children. So for them, peace (Frieden) tastes of peppermint. But the preacher’s constant sermons about the evil of the Soviet “Ivans” awaken in Marianne memories of the trauma of war, which intensify when “Mr Peace” receives orders to go to Korea. (Berlinale)