Katharina Bullin - Und ich dachte ich wär' die Größte

Katharina Bullin – And I Thought I Was The Greatest

Katharina Bullin won a silver medal at the Olympic Games in 1980. She was a member of the GDR’s national volleyball team. Twenty years and twelve operations later, she finds it impossible to sleep without a special mattress. She is forced to continue her training in order to support her body. But what really keeps her awake at night is her journey back through her own past. Her attempt to come to terms with past events leads her to discover some astonishing facts about competitive sport in the GDR.

Marcus Welsch: “In the beginning I wanted to tell the sobering story of a woman’s fall from grace. I didn’t want to make a film about the GDR that employed a sentimental, soft-focus approach. (…) Only gradually did I become fully aware of the utter cynicism of East Germany’s state plan 14.25 – the anabolic industrialisation of professional sport in all its ramifications. Instead of a report that follows a journalistic trajectory of accusation, I decided to use the form of a portrait in order to show what prompted this individual to begin her search and to illustrate her struggle for equilibrium.”

A film about the effects of testosterone on a woman’s body that is also the story of a top athlete who is not allowed to age.

Source: 56. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (catalogue)