According to Goethe, children need roots and wings.

As parents know, following the maxim in practice is a challenge.

The paths to self-development are tortuous.

Sometimes they even lead through the Australian outback with its snakes and dingoes, emus and poisonous spiders, as in the first Degeto entertainment film production by ARD, which will hopefully not be decisive for the year 2023.

It doesn't get more ambitious than that.

While here, halfway through the adventure and puberty-finding film "Barefoot through Australia", at night around the campfire after plenty of schnapps, the hair and expression of the hotel optimizer Svenja Kröger (Anneke Kim Sarnau) and her previously fired boatman Kalti (Aaron Pedersen) rebuffs her advances in a relaxed manner, viewers not only get a lesson in Bruce Chatwin clichés, but also in the current trend of "culturally sensitive" storytelling.

Pictures like on a photo wallpaper

This means we are dealing with the usual TV movie single parent conflicts, this time relocated to Australia to underline the mother's homelessness and the indigenous people's deep understanding of the world.

Filming took place in Adelaide and in the Nilpena outback.

The nature shots, including dozens of sunrises and sunsets as well as bird's-eye views of the vast country, are spectacular (camera by Bernd Fischer) – like on a photo wallpaper.

The first half of the film takes place mainly on the river.

Again and again pelicans rush into the picture - animals that stand for the self-sacrifice of the children.

Here it is the other way around: the child follows the restless mother and has to move around the planet with her.

The encounter with Aboriginals (as it is called today) and the danger of nature leads to repentance.

Kira (Amira Demirkiran), has been jetting from country to country with her hotel manager mother for years and is thoroughly fed up with life in resorts.

Again and again she offends as a rebel at school.

After protecting Kalti's son Jack (Tjiirdm McGuire) from racist insults by white teachers and classmates, she faces expulsion from school.

She sets off on the "walkabout", a barefoot hiking ritual of the Aboriginal people, and disappears into the desert.

She wants to find her “special place” along the “Traumpfade”.

Jack should lead her.

This is a clear case of cultural appropriation, which the enamored teenagers, who soon experience their first time under the stars, resolve with youthful insouciance.

Kira is not native.

She doesn't know the lore.

She is not traveling alone.

It is supposed to be a secret, spiritual journey.

You can't talk about them and certainly not make films about them.

How does that fit together?

Not at all, but that doesn't matter either.

Create a new ritual, Jack decides.

Dingoes, snake bites, ballet lessons

Gernot Gricksch's screenplay soon put obstacles in the way of the culture stormers.

Drinking water is running out, dingoes are attacking the provisions, Jack is bitten by a snake, Kira has to get help on her own.

The anxious mother had imagined her daughter's initiation differently.

She is "from Lübeck, there you have confirmation and it's good.

I screwed it up,” Svenja states.

Her daughter had had ballet lessons in Moscow with a teacher from the Bolshoi Ballet.

You can imagine the rest.

The resolution of the film seems shoddy, as if those responsible had lost interest in the middle of the cut.

A certain "Alan Smithee" signed on as the director, an alias for a creative person who did not want to give her name to the finished film.

As for the actual director, whose name is known, Degeto speaks of differences in post-production.

These are understandable: the decision to have Pedersen and his film son McGuire badly dubbed is bad.

Anneke Kim Sarnau, known to be an actress of stature, seems to have been left alone by the director.

Whoever did the scene selection didn't have a good handle on narrative flow.

If this is to be "culturally sensitive" television fiction, we must brace ourselves for tough times in front of screens.

Barefoot through Australia

runs today at 8.15 p.m. on the first.