System Crasher

Nora Fingscheidt's System Crasher won the Silver Bear (Alfred Bauer Prize) at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019 — the festival's prize for films that open new perspectives — and was selected as Germany's official submission for the 92nd Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category. At the German Film Awards in 2019 it took eight Lolas, including Best Film and Best Director, the highest single-film tally of the year.

The lead, Helena Zengel, was nine years old at the time of shooting; her performance was widely treated as one of the strongest child screen performances in European cinema of the decade. Zengel went on to play opposite Tom Hanks in News of the World (2020), the youngest German actress to receive a Golden Globe nomination, and continues to work in major German and international productions. The supporting cast includes Albrecht Schuch, Lisa Hagmeister and Gabriela Maria Schmeide.

Fingscheidt — who had previously made the documentary Without This World (2017) — researched the German youth-welfare system extensively before writing the script, working with social workers and former charges across multiple Wohngruppen (residential group homes). The German term Systemsprenger, which the film popularised, has since entered general usage in domestic press coverage of youth-services policy debates. Fingscheidt's next project was the Netflix English-language drama The Unforgivable with Sandra Bullock.