Born in Czechoslovakia in 1928, at a very young age Haro Senft was devoted to painting, his first passion. In 1954 he created his production company, Boheme Film that would become Haro Senft Filmproduktion two years later. At the end of the 1950’s with other film directors like Edgar Reitz and Alexander Kluge, Haro Senft set himself up  as the founder of the New German Film Industry, a film industry without conventions and without commercial constraints. In 1962 these young film makers drew up the Oberhausen Manifesto in which they hail the coming of a new film industry, one that is better than “old-fashioned cinema”.

Haro Senft follows in the very footsteps of such contemporaries as Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982), believers in a committed film industry, vindicating a form of social protest through art.  Motivated by this commitment, one which seemed to be shared by the German youth these directors represented this New German Wave from the end of the 60’s and a new wave inspired by the New French Wave up to the middle of the 70’s.

In Sterne in der Stadt, which translates as Stars in the city, Haro Senft echoes this creed.  He pits the anti-establishment youth of the 70’s against the police authority in a society that seems to find it hard to accommodate both.  The original soundtrack written and composed by Glen Moray shouts out the message “the city will take you, break you and make you starve” loud and clear.