In the organizer's words:

The music theater project 'Songs for Joy' was created in May 2024 in collaboration with the Deutsches Schauspielhaus on the Veddel and was celebrated in 2 concerts in front of a full house on the big stage. "We set your texts to music" was the simple basis on which the idea was born at Berlin's Gorki Theater in 2006. From the poems they received, Erobique and Palminger, together with a motley crew of musicians and singers, arranged and staged moving catchy tunes, grooving electropop, emotional hits and other rousing obscurities and brought them to the stage. Songs such as "Wann strahlst Du", "Finsterwalde" and "November in Berlin" are still playing on the radio today, are clicked hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube and Spotify and still sound fresh.

In 2024, Carsten Meyer and Jacques Palminger reinvented the idea in collaboration with the Schauspielhaus's outdoor venue on the Veddel. Texts, singers and musicians are sought and found in this "marginalized" part of town to surf through words, melodies and emotions. Small stories are told with big melodies and vice versa;

The joy of playing comes before perfection, just don't be afraid to embarrass yourself!

In the large hall of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, the freshly baked songs are presented to the enraptured audience, still warm from the oven. Together with the sold-out auditorium, the film celebrates the musical grab bag and the colorful ensemble with standing ovations. We not only get to know the musicians with their different social, religious, political and biographical backgrounds and talents, but also the people from the neighborhood on whose very personal emotions and stories the songs are based.

Meyer and Palminger create a large, positive space full of creativity together, and this is where folk music is created in the best sense of the word: music that makes all the people who create it happy. And the audience can be part of it.

Germany 2025, 105 minutes

Funky Chicken Film in co-production with Relevant Film

In collaboration with the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg

Director: Jan Becker

Camera: Ralf Mendle

Sound: Kay Madsen

Editing: Paris Bergen, Jan Becker

Music: Carsten "Erobique" Meyer

Color grading: Jochen Hinrichs-Stöldt / Optical Art

Mixing: Simon Bastian / Zeigermann Audio