Grooving Queens

The c/o pop Festival in Cologne has launched the “Forever Fresh” project together with the North Rhine-Westphalia State Music Council: eleven senior women are starting a new challenge – they are being trained as DJs. Several instructors teach DJ skills, how to use the technical equipment on set and how to mix. They also train the participants in styling, performance and social media. The minimum age limit is 70 and the oldest participant is 98 years old.

Throughout the project, three protagonists with contrasting characters are accompanied in their private lives and in all workshops up to the final show. We meet Bettina, Monika and Edeltraut, who at over 70 are trying out something completely new and living their age in a new way. Bettina is wild and determined. She takes us kickboxing, belly dancing and drinking Kölsch and lets us become part of her thoughts. Monika is the oldest. She is extroverted, wants to be seen and wants to party. You can still be a cool and attractive woman at 80. Edeltraut is the quietest of the three, who invites us into her everyday life, where we come across many charitable projects and senior citizens in Cologne. With all the excitement before the final DJane performance, the next requests for a gig in Munich and an open-air party in Frankfurt are already coming in, so the three women are full of adrenaline and will continue to be portrayed after the project.

The documentary shows three courageous and everyday women who do not want to let their brilliance be taken away from them and do not let their age dominate them, but swim against the current. This project is not about showing older women in a state of emergency or portraying them in such a way that they show a defiant reaction to their age, which our protagonists have also emphasized.

It’s more about showing that ageing is natural and that people don’t have to become isolated and can no longer do anything. The stigma of the “old granny” who just sits at home and cooks for her grandchildren is to be broken. The documentary is therefore aimed at an audience with a strong focus on the typical older TV viewer, who can identify with the protagonists, as well as a young and interested audience, who can identify with the young women behind the DJ project, for example, and who can reflect on their own ageing and how they deal with older people.

Directors: Bamdad Esmaili and Niloufar Taghizadeh
Production: Windcatcher
Editing: Catharina Kleber