Nirvana is Here

Two German siblings, 12-year-old Tam and 14-year-old Dennis Nguyen, encounter a young Vietnamese woman in trouble in a flea market parking lot. When Tam’s spy movie-obsessed schoolmate, Alex, discovers an abandoned backpack with a photo of a happy couple with Tam’s address on the back, it will lead the two to discover a severed finger. Worried, Tam searches for the desperate woman, aided by her reluctant brother, and eventually finds Hoa Bin, who escaped from her kidnapper – who’s still tracking her down. Drawn to Hoa Bin, Tam vows to save her – even if she has to break her stern-but-loving mom’s rules, dodge the bad guys in wild chases through the Berlin streets, and combine the forces of Marina, the Nguyens’ tough-chick neighbour, Jutta, an elderly retired actress, a rollerblading girl gang, and many others to do so. In Ross’s empathetic, loose-but-controlled lines, cartoonishly expressive kids interact against and within the realistically depicted urban environments, given texture and grit by screen-tones. Nirvana is Here is a contemporary crime thriller that has adventure, diasporic, coming-of-age, and love story elements, set in Berlin’s working-class Lichtenberg district against a backdrop of very current social issues.