For a change, a contemporary setting: it opens with schoolteacher, Green activist and single mother Friederieke becoming furious at the success of the Pirate Party in the Berlin state elections in September 2011 (8.9%, 15 seats). Those are votes that should have gone to the Greens, not to a bunch of reckless nerds. She's particularly angry with one of the new Pirate delegates in the state parliament, Volker Plauschenat, who has taken the credit for a successful meme she believes he has stolen from an idea in a blogpost she wrote.

Friederieke decides to infiltrate the Pirates and get her revenge on Volker, which allows Löhr to give us a lot of fascinating — and often very funny — detail about the Pirate phenomenon in German politics, and to show us that there were actually a few serious and worthwhile ideas hiding behind the pony tails, Star Trek references, bestickered MacBooks, and endless bottles of Club-Mate. Of course, we all know how a romantic comedy has to end if it starts with a female character hating a male character, but Löhr manages to twist the narrative inevitability away from the totally obvious a few times along the way. A fun glimpse into the long-gone 2010s! ( )