Norbert Kuckelmann elicits remarkably moving performances from non-professional actors in this fiction-documentary, a scathing analysis of how a young boy's life is destroyed by the very institutions supposedly designed to protect him. Thirteen-year-old Martin Sonntag lives on the outskirts of Munich in a section of town they call Little Chicago. Martin's police file began when he was seven; at the age of nine he was committing petty thefts, cracking open vending machines, and mastering the art of escape. In his special school, they refer to him affectionately as a "hopeless case." At fourteen, Martin at last crosses the threshold to the age of "criminal responsibility."