"Is that what really happened, you can google it," says Buba (Bjarne Mädel) in the Netflix film of the same name. It's about the fact that he wants to have won a breakdance competition against the later Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio. To take part in this competition, Buba secretly sneaks away while his parents and brother Dante drive away.
Tragically, the parents die in an accident the same day and Dante falls into a coma. He wakes up from it again later, but is still not the same as before. From that moment on, Buba, whose real name is Jakob Otto, believes that bad things always happen to his brother when he himself is having fun and feeling lucky. That's why he keeps a pain diary from now on: he eats rotten apples or later has his ribs broken so that his brother is fine and he can be happy himself.
So the breakdance competition is the central starting point for the story. And there actually was. Leo was there too. The real winner from back then is not called Buba, but Achim Schilling, as reported by "Gala.de" and "Deutsche Welle" among others.
On the occasion of Leonardo DiCaprio's victory as best actor at the Oscars 2016, the old, black and white newspaper report was dug out of the archive again. Summer 1984 in the small town of Oer-Erkenschwick near Recklinghausen in North Rhine-Westphalia: Leo looks mischievous and wears a cropped shirt with the inscription USA. The caption reads: "The first prize, a Walkman and a small trophy, went to Achim Schilling. (...) Leonardo DiCaprio can take a breakdance record across the pond to his hometown of Los Angeles to go with the medal."
The blog "Kraftfuttermischwerk" quotes from an interview with the winner that appeared in the "Dorstener Zeitung" but is no longer available online. In it, Achim Schilling remembers a little boy: "In 1984, the 'Stimberg Zeitung' called for a breakdance tournament in the city park and because a few friends and I did it, we went there. There were 300 spectators - and no visitors The United States. The boy from Los Angeles, who we all called Leo, must have been nine years old at the time. We were all quite excited because Leo had already won a few tournaments in the United States and he was very ambitious."
As reported by "Deutsche Welle", Leo competed under the breakdance name "The Noodle". Leonardo DiCaprio was raised by his mother Irmelin, he often spent his summer holidays with his grandmother Helene in Oer-Erkenschwick. Even after his breakthrough, he kept visiting his grandmother in Germany until she died in 2008.
Sources: "Deutsche Welle", "Gala.de", "Kraftfuttermischwerk"
