RUNAWAY

 Stefan Roloff’s Durchbrenner is a timeless coming of age story.  It is a gripping, wild, funny ride of what it was like to grow up during turbulent times, a not-so-distant echo of our current moment.  It’s about how we make sense of a head-spinning world and find our footing within it. Roloff masterfully re-embodies the thoughts and emotions of his boyhood self as he roller coasters into manhood.

Growing up in Cold War West Berlin Max, a free spirit, experiences suffocating restrictions. Deep silence rules society in the aftermath of Hitler’s reign. Max is forced to play piano while an unfettered psychedelic culture rages among young people. It is the late 1960s, and Max decides to break out.  He escapes from his walled-in hometown and travels through the streets of Europe. Months later, through a ruse, his mother lures him to Tenerife, a remote island in Spain ruled by the dictator, General Franco. Max finds himself without a passport and no money in the home of a doctor intent on re-educating him. He encounters the dangers of the island’s military dictatorship as he dives into its underground on a quest to escape his imprisonment for good.