I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

THIS AIN'T California tells a great story, of the growth and development of the nascent skateboarding culture in East Germany during the Eighties. Told through the biography of one of the leading protagonists in the movement, Dirk (aka Panik), this documentary tells of how a group of friends came together in a local housing estate, and developed their own approach to skateboarding - not necessarily in opposition to the West, but independently of it. Eventually the group came into contact with colleagues from West Germany, as well as other skateboarders from Europe and the United States; and they discovered that the community was far greater than they had anticipated. The group were not necessarily rebelling against communist rule; rather they were creating an alternative world in which personal fulfillment mattered more than collective good. This message is a powerful one; but devalued somewhat by the fact that much of the footage - which claims to be authentic from the Eighties - has been mocked up for the film. Moreover the narrative thrust becomes a little lost as the film unfolds; perhaps there ought to have been less slo-mo shots of the skateboarders in action and more emphasis on the multiple narrators - the group (now middle aged) looking back on their exploits.

Is it a documentary? Is it a feature? First time writer and director Marten Persiel tells us that it is actually both, more of a 'documentary tale' of sorts. This description of the German subtitled feature is quite fitting.This Ain't California introduces us to a group of friends who are gathering for a funeral after-party, following the death of their once close friend 'Dennis 'Panik' Paracek. What follows is a reminiscence session of old memories and footage showing the rise of staking, hip-hop and break dancing all throughout the GDR controlled 1980's.Split into several subheadings and with an additional back story, this ain't a normal documentary. It is an entirely fresh approach. Director Marten Persiel describes the films ethos was the keep away from the politics – especially the Berlin Wall. Instead the film fundamentally follows the subjective mind-set of a 17 year old of the era. This is reflected heavily, what with the shaky cam, youths doing a ton of impressive skateboarding tricks. All of that, but mixed with a mash of funky-techno music. Very unique in a sense, however it deeply echoes as just a blend of German sport advertisements merely with the brand logo missing. Sadly it is nothing more than that.Filled with footage because it can, not because it should, Marten Persiel's first feature film still stands as an original take on a documentary and it is perhaps the first skating movie ever cared for.

This film is great - but the producers find it OK that many websites continue calling it a documentary, which it is not. This is docu-fiction, very well-done docu-fiction, perhaps too well-done. Because it blurs the borders between what is real (documentary and archive material) and what is fiction. The main plot-line of the film is written and created, exactly as you would do writing a script for a feature film. The main protagonist - PANIK - is a composition of three real-life characters - and I am not inventing this, I am quoting the words of one of the film's producers. During a recent film and television festival, he and the film were heavily attacked by the jury of the documentary section, where the film was inscribed, for not revealing the truth and actually declaring the film to be a documentary. Ultimately, the film was excluded from the documentary category. What is so bad about this whole thing is not the film itself, which is quite brilliant. It is the tactics around it, and the fact that the producers are not at all forthcoming with the truth about their film. They prefer to feed the "mystery" around it instead of saying once and for all: "This ain't a documentary!"

It's a wild mixture of old and real snippets that were filmed in the earlier 1980's and new material. For the new material that shows the group in the later 80's they worked with actors. Also in the scenes that claim to show the group in 2011 some of the people are real while others are actors. All that is never explained. Everything that's supposed to show the 80's has the same grainy look. Also the end credits give no clue. They simply list all people involved in front of the camera in alphabetic order. You can not see who is real and who's an actor. Also the character of "Panik" is fiction. I was born in 1973 and grew up in East-Berlin exactly during this era. I also know one of the actors. So when I saw him speaking of himself I knew that he was not telling his own story. Whose story it is I don't know. It might be pure invention as well. I also noticed several mistakes in the additional footage they filmed. What I know for sure is that there were skaters at the Berlin Alexanderplatz in the 80s. Everything else? Could be real – or fake. The problem I see is the way the director and producer handled the project. It took some hard questioning at the press conference at the Berlinale before the director was forced to admit, that parts of the movie are not real. Before he had claimed several times in interviews that it's a documentary. A German magazine (Der Spiegel) had asked the producer for more information about the authenticity of the material. He flatly refused to answer and more or less said that it doesn't matter if something is real or not. I think the audience gets an entirely wrong impression if this movie is called a documentary. It's a feature film – nothing else.