Smash

Flo and Ari are best friends with a shared passion: table tennis! But shortly before the summer holidays, Ari suddenly dies – and Flo's world falls apart. Who will he play table tennis with during breaks now, who will he dream of a future as a table tennis star with, who will he dream with at all? When he starts a new class after the holidays, where no one has ever heard of his best friend, Flo blurts out: Ari is in the Olympic squad! The youngest Olympic athlete ever! With his stories about Ari's successes, he manages to infect the whole class with his table tennis fever – but his guilty conscience grows with every day he has to maintain the lie. Only with Wendy, who is also new to the school and at least as lonely as he is, can Flo speak differently – and so he gradually realises that it's okay to be sad and that sometimes it helps not to be alone with it.

Smash tells a gentle and tender story of a great friendship, of farewells and grief, of letting go and missing someone, of not forgetting and moving on – even when everything feels different (and sometimes very wrong). And of someone staying, even when they are no longer there. With lightness and humour, Dorian Brunz asks the difficult questions: is there an appropriate and correct way to grieve, is it okay to create memories that never existed, and are untruths sometimes justified?