The tense drama Klassenfeind takes place inside one classroom, as the students express themselves with growing degrees of animosity and polarization, until the schoolroom itself suffers as much damage at their hands as they have suffered internally. The issues that cause trouble among the students are unemployment, a large, poor minority group (the Turks), and the tendency to resort to violence to solve problems. Originally an award-winning play by Nigel Williams for the London stage, this 1978 creation was rewritten for a West German audience, and after its success on the stage, the play was enacted by the same cast for this movie version by Peter Stein. The setting has been changed from South London to its West Berlin counterpart, Kreuzberg, the characters' names are changed to fit the German language, and the issues at hand are also contemporary problems in West Berlin. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi