Powerbanks (2019)

Rosa is the new girl in town and doesn't exactly hit it of with the local girl clique, "The QTs", who rule "the streets" of the local shopping mall. When Rosa starts to flirt with Agan, the gang leader's crush, things get rough in the data mosh pit. Powerbanks, is a kind of magical-realist fantasia set inside the capitalist-surrealist environment of a German shopping mall in the Rhineland city of Mönchengladbach. It follows the events (and non-events) in the lives of a group of local teens as cliques collide and tentative romance burgeons. Thie's previous work, Translantics, was a web series focussing on the lives of arty millennial types as they drift between cities and disappointments. Powerbanks similarly explores youth, ennui, cultural positioning and performativity; except, instead of following globe-trotting bright(ish) young things, all the action takes place in the interior of Mönchengladbach's retail cathedral and centres on kids from the city itself.