{"id":185800,"date":"2025-02-11T19:50:20","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T19:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ucm.one\/ascend-2024-by-martina-schone-radunski-and-lana-cooper-darling-berlin\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T10:59:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T10:59:30","slug":"ascend","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ucm.one\/en\/ascend\/","title":{"rendered":"Ascend (2024) by Martina Sch\u00f6ne-Radunski and Lana Cooper | Darling Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Flieg Steil | Ascend:<\/span><\/h1>\n

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Konnie, a respected musician in the right-wing scene, loses her reputation when she incorporates feminist and queer content into her music. In order to rehabilitate herself, she uses the outsider punk Rudi, who wants to attack a Nazi pub. But both end up fighting a battle for belonging – who will be left standing?<\/p>\n

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Summary<\/h3>\n

Konnie (28), who is respected in the Berlin Nazi scene, sees her reputation among her comrades dwindle more and more: Since Konnie has been integrating her ultra-feminist, sex-positive, body-positive and queer views into her music and vehemently defending them, the right-wing scene can no longer do anything with her. Andi in particular, the pub owner of Friedrichshain’s Stahlkappen Division, has her on his back. When Konnie meets punk Rudi, who wants to blow up Konnie’s Nazi pub in a fatalistic solo effort, she finds him to be the perfect pawn to make herself popular again with her right-wing comradeship. Rudi (38), who has driven all his friends away with his unpredictable, aggressive behavior and has himself become an outsider in his punk clique, is also looking for a way to get closer to his buddies again. Which of the two will be left in the end?<\/p>\n

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Director’s Note by Martina Sch\u00f6ne-Radunski<\/h3>\n

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Ascend <\/strong>(German Title: Flieg Steil) tells the story of two outsiders who find no place in the world. Rudi wants to achieve immortality in the punk scene by destroying a Berlin Nazi pub, sabotaging his last friendship (Cervezito) with defiance and denying his son August, whom he fathered with the love of his life, Sandra. Konnie, on the other hand, tries to revolutionize her macho Nazi pub with feminism, body positivity and LGBTQIA* – a “bug in the system” that exposes right-wing contradictions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Her sentence “The future of National Socialism is female” is provocative: Is the male hierarchy biologically determined? Wouldn’t an NS matriarchy be more logical? But Rudi and Konnie take refuge in transgressiveness for fear of remaining meaningless.<\/em><\/p>\n

Caught between self-hatred and delusions of grandeur, they act like isolated monads, incapable of truly recognizing the other. The narrative space is based less on causality than on symbolic repetition.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Konnie and Rudi fall prey to a solipsism in which only their own experience is considered real. The outside world seems unreal – an attitude that leads to vigilante justice, similar to the Reichsb\u00fcrger.<\/em><\/p>\n

Konnie’s plot is based on observations of Christopher Street Day in Leipzig (17.08.2024) and Bautzen, where neo-Nazis threatened the parades. The active participation of young right-wing women who specifically opposed gender diversity and LGBTQIA* rights was striking.<\/em><\/p>\n

According to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, the participation of women in right-wing extremism is increasing. By integrating women more strongly, these movements are modernizing themselves and broadening their base. Young women are staged as “defenders” of traditional values and thus gain influence.<\/em><\/p>\n

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It is also clear that right-wing extremist groups in Germany are increasingly planning and carrying out targeted campaigns against the LGBTQIA* community.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was interested in the question: What if a young right-wing woman uses feminism and LGBTQIA* to secure National Socialism? How could these concepts be defined in a fascist reading?<\/em><\/p>\n

Just as left-wing advocates of arms deliveries are seen as warmongers while right-wingers present themselves as peace ambassadors, queer identity politics could be reinterpreted in a diametrically populist way in the future.<\/em><\/p>\n

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