"Grüne Wüste"/"Green Desert" (2001) - Marcel Barsotti

A nicely calibrated coming-of-ager, balanced on personal loss rather than sexual initiation, "Green Desert" fields a tony cast on material that falls uneasily between kidpic fare and adult drama. In that respect, this first feature by TV director Anno Saul reps a difficult sell, though festivals and small-screen buyers should take a look.

Two young teens, Katja (Tatjana Trieb) and Johann (Robert Gwisdek), are best friends who hang out in a ruined fort and share the same dreams of an idealized, fixed-values world (symbolized by a knight on a charger). When Johann is hospitalized with leukemia, half of Katja's world starts to crumble; the other half is also shaky, as her brittle mom (Martina Gedeck) has to decide whether to keep up her marriage to an understanding hubby (Ulrich Noethen) or ankle with her lover (Heino Ferch), Johann's father. Shot and lit with precision in widescreen, with strong performance from young Trieb (Lara, as a child, in "Beyond Silence" by Caroline Link), Gwisdek and Gedeck, pic has a beautiful quality of stillness that prevents its becoming a saccharine disease-of-the-week telepic or downbeat kitchen-sinker. Gwisdek's mom, actress Corinna Harfouch, cameos fleetingly as a nurse.

Marcel Barsotti's score to this great movie is one of the most -if not THE most- beautiful score I've ever heard. The score is extremly hard to find nowadays and the CD (used) sells for US$ 75.00 up to US$ 150.00 on Amazon Germany.

The link is to be found in the comments