Is life on Helgoland really worth living?
The totalitarian world order on Heligoland in the frighteningly near future is as pragmatic as it is ruthless: Anyone who has an indispensable benefit finds themselves at the top of the ranking, which literally decides between life and death. A doctor, for example, will never have to worry about his continued existence despite some missteps – a writer of series reviews, on the other hand, will probably have been buried long ago.
The seven episodes of “Helgoland 513” are dedicated to several fundamental questions: How inhumane can a system be in order to ensure its own continued existence? What character traits such as denunciation and selfishness do it reveal? And do the rules really only apply until they affect the people who made them?
Films like “The Hunger Games” with Jennifer Lawrence or “Elysium” with Matt Damon portrayed a similarly bleak future world in which the division of society has reached its maximum and the figurative fight for survival has long since become a literal one. “Helgoland 513” still manages to give this well-known narrative new relevance.
This is possible thanks to the geographical and temporal proximity. This is not about New York in the year 2450, “Helgoland 513” returns to your own doorstep and not 15 years from the present. We didn’t have to look far for real inspiration: punks who traveled to Sylt in protest (and thanks to the Deutschlandticket) and demonstrated against the supposed two-class society – only to be feared like lepers by some villa owners and thus have their theory confirmed. In some minds, the social rankings from “Helgoland 513” have long been around.