Babystar
Joscha Bongard
Luca has always been in the spotlight. Her parents are influencers, and she is one too – simply by being born into it. Image is everything; perfection, combined with a hint of vulnerability, is what makes her a star. Her parents know how to make money from their daughter. When they decide to have another child, Luca falls into a deep hole. Who is she outside her social media persona? Who is she if not a product to be marketed? Luca begins to doubt her role, her parents, and their intentions. Desperately, she attempts to break free from the glamour and the performance, from a world that feels fake to her.
The film's unsettling atmosphere is strengthened by the relevance and realism of its subject matter. Luca fights, but can she free herself from her dependency? What remains when the screen turns dark?
1 May 2026
20:15 h, Kino des DFF
More information
| Direction | Joscha Bongard |
| Country | Germany |
| Production year | 2025 |
| Duration | 98 min |
| Language | German |
| Language Version | original version |
| Genre | Drama |
| Production | Lisa Purtscher, Lotta Schmelzer |
| Production company | LiseLotte Films |
| Distribution | Across Nations |
| Cast | Maja Bons, Bea Brocks, Liliom Lewald, Maximilian Mundt |
| Director of Photography | Jakob Sinsel |
| Script | Nicole Rüthers, Joscha Bongard |
| Montage | Emma Holzapfel, Wolfgang Purkhauser |
| Sound | Muhammet Can |
| Music | Jonas Vogler |
| Sound Design | Jan-Eric Heitland |
Presented by:
About the director
Joscha Bongard studied feature film directing at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy. After making short films and the documentary Pornfluencer, Babystar is his first feature-length film.
Press reviews
“Joscha Bongard wears his influences without shame – Dogtooth, The Bling Ring, Thirteen – but Babystar finds an aesthetic and spiritual North Star in Lost Highway. Cinematographer Jakob Sinsel shoots Luca’s home in direct homage to Lynch’s Hot Topic masterpiece, finding shadows so thick in the house’s cloying pink hallways you worry they might drown the family. Babystar knows better than to approximate Lost Highway’s horror – what could? – but Lynch proves a fitting, if unexpected, ancestor. Like Patricia Arquette, Luca is bound by a sickly and shadowed dependency to a life on the wrong side of a camera; if Luca’s danger is more materially defined than Arquette’s, her dread is every bit as demonically abstract.” (Christian Craig, inreviewonline.com)
On May 1: Q&A with the director
Future German Cinema
