Solo Sunny

Sunny doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do. Despite resistance and disappointments, she follows her dream of making it in a career as a singer. The tragicomic music drama by DEFA greats Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase became a cult film and box-office hit.    

In East Berlin at the end of the 1970s, Sunny dreams of becoming a star with her music and performing on the big stages. To achieve this, she has given up her job as a factory worker and is now touring with her band through the staid backwaters. But her artistic ambitions are not all that meet with little success; her search for love and personal happiness also leads to disappointment time and again. But despite all her professional and personal setbacks, Sunny does not let herself be kept from following her dreams.  

SOLO SUNNY is one of the great DEFA classics. Based on the real-life story of the singer Sanije Torka, it paints the picture of a woman who refuses to be browbeaten: brash, unadorned, authentic. The last film by GDR star director Konrad Wolf – who gave his name to Germany’s oldest film school in Potsdam-Babelsberg – based on a script by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, allowed itself subversion and blunt social criticism in its unruly protagonist. After Renate Krößner was awarded the Silver Bear at the 1980 Berlinale and the film also won the FIPRESCI Critics’ Prize, SOLO SUNNY quickly became a box-office hit. The success was due not least to the soundtrack, which was a collaboration between musician and composer Günther Fischer and jazz singer Regine Dobberschütz, who interpreted all of Sunny’s titles.   

Image © DEFA Stiftung, Dieter Lück