Winner of awards at the Rottedamn Interbnational Film Festival, the German Critics Association Awards (where it won Best Feature Film Debut), the Durban International Film Festival (ditto) at the Las Palmas International Film Festival (Best Actress), Pia Marais' remarkable 2006 film The Unpolished (Die Unerzogenen) is one of the most assured and startling feature debuts of recent years.

Stevie, a wild but fiercely-intelligent 14-year old girl at the emotional heart of the film, must cope with the instabilities of her hippy parents. When they move to a small town in Germany, Stevie attempts to slip into a normal life. Whilst her parents escape their responsibilities, spending their days high, hooking up deals and filling the house with hangers-on, Stevie tries to make an impression on her new schoolmates, spreading stories of an imaginary and ideally-conventional homelife.

An unblinking study of a girl caught up in a complicated adult world, The Unpolished also presents an ambivalent image of the fall-out from a counter-culture gone bad. What shines through is the resourcefulness of a girl who deserves, and is determined to get, something better, as Stevie makes the real journey towards maturity and independence that her parents ought to have made years ago. The Unpolished is humanist filmmaking of the highest order.

The Unpolished will be releaesd on UK DVD on 12th July 2010 by Second Run at the RRP of £12.99. Featuring an all-new digital transfer with restored picture and sound and new English subtitle translation, the disc will also have the following extras:

• A new filmed introduction with director Pia Marais;
• Booklet featuring a new essay by an author yet to be confirmed.