In a hotel room in Norway, Jutta Müller (Dagmar Manzel) puts up Katarina Witt’s (Lavinia Nowak) hair for the last time. The two women are on their way to the Olympic freestyle. The women’s ice skating competition in Lillehammer in February 1994 was in the spotlight worldwide – and not just because of the comeback of the two-time Olympic champion. Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding also competed as opponents – and Kerrigan had been attacked and injured in the knee by a man from Harding’s environment a few weeks earlier. The American ice skating drama had already been filmed in 2018. “I, Tonya” even won an Oscar.
The ZDF film by Andrea Stoll (book) and Michaela Kezele (director) is primarily a two-person piece about the tense relationship between a star athlete and her trainer. Unfortunately, the first dialogues are strange. Because on the way from the hotel room to the ice rink, the elevator gets stuck and Katarina Witt explains to Jutta Müller that she wants to complain to Gorbachev afterwards, whose phone number she has. What was this scene supposed to tell? That Witt was so out of touch that she didn’t even know that “Gorbi” hadn’t been at the helm for years?
After her botched appearance in Frankfurt, Kati Witt (Lavinia Nowak) is besieged by journalists.Stanislav Honzík/ZDF
After the overture, the film jumps back several months and shows Katarina Witt on her way from Chemnitz to America, where she earns a lot of money in ice skating revues. At Tegel Airport, a stroppy snack bar lady (Anna Thalbach) accuses her of always ending up on the bad side. Katarina Witt counters that she got a bruised ass and bloody feet during training. But the experiences of her father, who lost his job, also show her that successes from the GDR era apparently no longer count as much. She wants to prove it to everyone and decides to take a break from lucrative show business in order to train for the Olympics again, five years after she said goodbye to competitive sports. The only way back is with trainer Jutta Müller, who sits as a pensioner in her prefabricated apartment and asks her: “Why do you want to fall on your ass in Germany when America is at your feet?”
While Jutta Müller died at the beginning of 2023 at the age of almost 95, Katarina Witt accompanied the filming in the Czech Republic benevolently, agreed with her actress Lavinia Nowak and gave her tips on how she laced her ice skating shoes and that she should under no circumstances try to saxon like that like her. The Munich actress, born the year after the Lillehammer free skate and therefore as old as Katarina Witt was at the time of filming, resembles the role model, especially with her freestyle hairstyle and costume, and can shine on the ice as much as she does. In everyday life, however, it is difficult to see “Katarina Witt” in front of you – just as you know the original Witt primarily from her glamorous appearances in front of the camera.
The trainer had to insist on discipline from GDR times
Dagmar Manzel as a strict trainer with the big glasses and the characteristic hairstyle is a real show: Katarina Witt wasn’t the only one on the set who believed at first that Jutta Müller had been resurrected. The scenes between Manzel and Nowak are full of tensions that sometimes explode. After all, Katarina Witt was now the actual boss who paid her trainer – who in turn had to insist on the discipline from GDR times. In the private scenes with Sylvester Groth as Jutta Müller’s husband “Binges” and Andrea Hobrig and Jörg Steinberg as “Mom” and “Dad” Witt, the film looks into everyday life in Chemnitz after reunification.
The scenes in which Katarina Witt has to deal with her role in the GDR system and find out from her Stasi files that her journey has been followed since childhood and documented on over 1000 pages seem somewhat dutiful. She meets Egon Krenz (Alexander Schubert) in the forest and has to be told that she can’t cherry-pick everything. That probably means: If full support, then also total spying. Witt’s perfect image of the GDR is starting to show some cracks.
Witt falls a second time during her free skate performance in Frankfurt. Is it the end for the Olympics? Stanislav Honzík/ZDF
The grand finale on the ice ultimately combines fiction and reality in a very fluid way. Spectator stands and the decoration of the Olympic Hall were recreated in a Prague ice skating rink. Lavinia Novak shines like Katarina Witt – who finally says goodbye to competitive sports with a special freestyle. Musical quotes from “Tell me where the flowers are” are reminiscent of the Sarajevo Games, where she first won Olympic gold in 1984 and where the civil war was now raging. Katarina Witt took seventh place and was celebrated like a winner. By the way, the Ukrainian Oksana Bajul won the gold medal, just ahead of Nancy Kerrigan. Tonya Harding was one place behind Katarina Witt, Tanja Szewczenko one place ahead of her. These placements have not been achieved by any German ice skater since then. Nicole Schott achieved her best result in Beijing in 2022 when she came 16th. There are hardly any girls in this country who are willing to put up with a blue ass, bloody feet and a strict trainer for sporting fame.
Kati – A freestyle that lasts. From Thursday, September 26th, in the ZDF media library, on Thursday, October 3rd, at 8:15 p.m. on ZDF
