Sauhund

Bavaria, the early 1980s. Franz Josef Strauß, Freddie Mercury and Rainer Werner Fassbinder all live at the same time in Munich, a vibrant city of contradictions.

As the beginning of the HIV pandemic fuels the stigmatisation of homosexual men, young Flori is growing up in the Bavarian town of Wolfratshausen. He undertakes his compulsory community work in lieu of military service in a nursing home, experiences first love and discovers a fascination for women’s clothing in the local department store. Soon, his longing for the big city becomes overpowering. Flori sets off on a painful and yet liberating path into a new life in the metropolis of Munich where he can be openly gay.

Director Florian Fischer, who has frequently staged queer stories at the Schauspielhaus Bochum and the NT Gent, uses powerful images to celebrate a vanished Munich. Lion Christ’s debut novel is a humorous and emotional plea for solidarity in the queer scene and intergenerational friendship.

“What particularly fascinates me about 1980s Munich is its ambivalence. It was considered a gay party city, had flair, was sometimes magnanimously mentioned in the same breath as San Francisco or New York, and you could bump into Freddie Mercury, Barbara Valentin or Donna Summer on the dance floor. On the other hand, Bavaria’s AIDS policy made the city increasingly hostile to queer people and it became a place of repression. In my novel, Flori is caught in the middle of this contradiction.”

– Lion Christ, novelist