This is not a character, this is betrayal – Romina Küper
The film tells the story of mother and son. The 58-year-old hairdresser Melanie drives her son Stefan (32), a young author, to the first reading of his autobiographical debut novel DER SALON.
While for Stefan the trip turns into an argument about upward mobility narratives, his relationship with his mother and class shame, a pressing unease grows in Melanie: Who is her son, who suddenly talks as rantingly as the people on TV and looks as if he hasn’t washed in three weeks? How is she supposed to hold her own in an environment that is actually completely alien to her and where she sees no place for herself? The situation escalates during the reading, where they find no more words for this conflict. The story of a distant love and the double shame. The shame of one’s own origin and the shame of one’s own dissociation from one’s own origin.
Romina Küper
Romina Küper grew up in the Ruhr area in Germany, most of the time in her mom’s hair salon. She loves contradictions. Especially when it comes to working class children who start to study or do an artistic job. Also when it comes to representation of working class in the media which is usually told from a bourgeois perspective.
While still studying philosophy, theater studies and comparative literature (RUB Bochum, FU and UDK Berlin), she began a career as an actress and to date has appeared in more than 30 productions. Romina is known for the Netflix Show Woman of the Dead. Since 2021 she has been studying film directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg under Maren Ade.
