Michael (9) is a latchkey kid. He is usually already asleep when his mother comes home late at night, and when he leaves for school in the morning, she, in turn, is still abed. She is a sex worker and cries a lot. Michael is saving up for a bicycle; he runs errands and feels forced to steal from his classmates regularly. Michael is often alone… The Anton Chekhov quote, “I am like the wind blowing across the lonely fields” was the impetus for this impressive sketch of everyday life from the perspective of a child in Berlin’s Wedding district who must prematurely bow to the rules of the grown-up world. With sparse dialogue and in precisely stylised visuals, Time of Maturity is a story of social numbness and marginalisation. Both are accompanied by a generalised, latent sense of violence that, in the end, becomes manifest before the young boy’s eyes.

In the presence of Vivien Buchhorn, Shahid Saless Archive.