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Solo Sunny

Solo Sunny
Directed by Konrad Wolf
Wolfgang Kohlhaase
Written by Wolfgang Kohlhaase
Dieter Wolf
Starring Renate Krößner
Music by Günther Fischer
Cinematography Eberhard Geick
Edited by Evelyn Carow
Release date
  • 18 January 1980 (1980-01-18)
Running time
100 minutes
Country East Germany
Language German

Solo Sunny is a 1980 East German drama film directed by Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase. It was entered into the 30th Berlin International Film Festival, where Renate Krößner won the Silver Bear for Best Actress.Solo Sunny was the last completed film directed by Konrad Wolf.

Ingrid "Sunny" Sommer is a singer for an East German band, called the Tornadoes, whose audience is usually senior citizens. For Sunny, performing as a solo pop singer is her dream but singing the same song over and over to a small crowd has not gotten her there yet. When the saxophone player of the band is injured, the musician and philosopher Ralph steps in to substitute for him. Sunny falls for Ralph’s saxophone skills, and soon they become lovers. Sunny asks Ralph to write her a song, and eventually he agrees. After walking off the stage before a performance, Sunny is soon replaced in the band by a new girl. Sunny turns to Ralph for comfort and finds him cheating on her. Finally Sunny has a chance to sing solo on stage with the song Ralph wrote for her, but she does not feel the love that she desires from the audience and gives up. After mixing sleeping pills and alcohol Sunny ends up in a hospital where she stays for rehabilitation. Once Sunny gets back on her feet she goes back to her old factory job, but she quits shortly after starting. The film ends with Sunny being accepted as a singer for another band with a sound different from the Tornadoes.

Wolfgang Kohlhaase, East Germany’s most important screenwriter, wrote the screenplay for Solo Sunny and was made co-director of the film.> The inspiration for this film was a German singer named Sanije Torka who was born of eastern European immigrant parents.Jutta Voigt, a German journalist who interviewed Torka and had connections to Kohlhaase, was a consultant for the film. The information used for the film drew on an interview Voigt had done with the singer in 1976 that was never published because her lifestyle did not fit East German socialist views.

The composer for the songs used in Solo Sunny was Günther Fischer, a jazz musician.Regine Dobbershütz, a German singer, sang all of the songs that were performed by Sunny in the film, and it was her greatest success as a singer.


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