Rock ‘n’ Roll Ringo

Ringo (superbly played by Martin Rohde) is a dreamer trapped within the brightly lit but crassly commercial world of a funfair. Lured into the boxing ring as a star attraction, he hopes to repair the relationship with his deaf-mute daughter.

Fairgrounds in cinema are ambivalent things: they promise spectacular fantasy worlds, but are also tacky monuments to crass commercialism. Ringo, a reluctant manual worker at the Cranger Kirmes funfair near the Rhine-Herne Canal, is lured into the boxing ring, where he quickly becomes the (often bruised) star attraction. Meanwhile, on the personal plane, he struggles to forge a bond with his young, deaf-mute daughter in the wake of a broken marriage. Ringo is driven by a dream, and marks his time saving up money and pleasing his bosses. But will this environment snuff out his true, human potential?

Martin Rohde gives a commanding, sometimes richly comic performance as Ringo – often befuddled and passively led into risky situations by others, but always following the instincts of his generous heart. The tentative relationship between Ringo and another fairground dweller, Jenny, plunges him into the volatile contradictions of a seedy world poised between entertainment and commerce. Filmmaker Dominik Galizia depicts this near-extinct proletarian milieu with a brittle but alluring 1980s techno vibe. Vivid scenes involving dodgem bumper cars remind us how cinematic a cramped, vulgar location can be. 

– Adrian Martin

Trailer

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