Life is All You Get
(Das Leben ist eine Baustelle)

Screening on Film

Directed by Wolfgang Becker.
With Jürgen Vogel, Christiane Paul, Martina Gedeck.
Germany, 1997, 16mm, color, 118 min.

If life is all you get, Jan Nebel (Vogel) certainly gets a full share of it. On his way to work at the slaughterhouse he rescues a young woman from two men during a street riot, only to discover that her pursuers are plainclothes policemen. Left with a large fine, things start to get worse: he loses his job, learns he may be HIV-positive, and finds his father dead, face-down in a plate of pasta. With references to British directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, Becker’s Life Is All You Get is a sensitive, tragicomic approach to the young German generation of the late nineties, who search for their own identities as they seek out friendship, fortune, and love.