OI! WARNING

Incendiary features like “Romper Stomper” (17th CIFF, 1993) and “American History X” have delved into the skinhead lifestyle, but you have never seen anything quite like OI! WARNING, the bracing screen debut of the brothers Reding. Photographed in blazing black-and-white, it slamdances with restless energy and charged portrayals, as Janosch, an alienated German teenager, flees his middle-class existence for the town of Dortmund. There he hooks up with his idol, Kotja Maldinger, alias Koma, part-time boxer, full-time skinhead, and a regular of the tribalized club scene, with its mosh pits and alcohol brawls. The skinheads of OI! WARNING aren't so much pro-Nazi as anti-everything, but even they have their limits, and Koma reaches his when Janosch gravitates away from him and toward Zottel, an openly-gay punk tattoo-artist. There are girlfriends in Janosch and Koma's lives, so faithful and adoring they're often nauseating, but ultimately it's a twisted cross of male-male bondings that brings this skinhead duo to their gotterdammerung. (In German with English subtitles.)