Christiane F.: Bahnhof Zoo and West Berlin Locations

Christiane F. starts in Gropiusstadt, the concrete housing district on Berlin's southern edge. In 1976 the film finds 13-year-old Christiane in a social-housing high-rise at Joachim-Gottschalk-Weg 10, seventh floor, where she lives with her mother and younger sister. Gropiusstadt, a district of Neukölln named after the architect Walter Gropius, became infamous as the place where the real Christiane F. lived from childhood to adolescence. Bored and a huge David Bowie fan, she is about to hear of a new club in the city centre.

Location precision: The film names the address; the pin marks the Joachim-Gottschalk-Weg area, not the building.

In the book, the Bowie concert in the Deutschlandhalle on 10 April 1976 is where Christiane tries heroin for the first time. The film moves this night onto a patchwork: the Bowie stage footage was recorded in New York, where he was playing on Broadway in The Elephant Man, and the crowd shots come from an unrelated AC/DC concert in the Deutschlandhalle, spliced together to look like one event.

Zoologischer Garten, Berlin's Bahnhof Zoo, is the heart of the story. Christiane is drawn to this large station, notorious for drug trafficking and prostitution in its underpasses. The film shot here with real people: most of the extras at the station and at the club Sound were actual drug users and sex workers. The 1978 book Zoo Station made the station's name known across Germany.

Visitor guidance: Zoologischer Garten is still a working station and open to visit.

Behind Bahnhof Zoo, the side facing Jebensstraße was a late-1970s meeting point for rent-boys, teen runaways and drug addicts. The film's most haunting sequence plays out in these alleys: Christiane runs through the passages looking for her friend Babsi, and the camera lingers on drug users leaning against the walls of the underpass.

Location precision: The street runs along the rear of the station; the film does not name an exact spot.

One scene was filmed on Kurfürstenstraße, where Christiane stands alone waiting for someone to pick her up. Natja Brunckhorst, who played her, recalled that it was a long-lens shot with the camera team far away, and that a real man in a car tried to pick her up before the crew ran over shouting. The film was shot on a low budget in 1980 and released in 1981.

Location precision: The filming is documented on the street, not at a single address; the pin is mid-street.