Uwe Mann

We Call Her Hanka

A green lawn like an unused carpet, encircled by a neat forest edge, in the background the steaming cooling towers of a coal power station – impressionistic camera images from Lusatia. They summarise in one pan how a used-up utilitarian landscape is trying to recultivate itself. Can ancient identity and language be re-discovered amid this strange artificiality? The director travelled through this region in search of her origins. She was born here, in Lusatia. This is her home and that of the smallest of all Slavic peoples: the Sorbs.

Frauen in Landschaften

Four female politicians with East German backgrounds - Anke Domscheit-Berg, Manuela Schwesig, Yvonne Magwas and Frauke Petry - analyse German history and their own life stories.

Leaving and Staying

Meetings with readers, acquaintances and contemporaries of writer Uwe Johnson at the places where he lived. Volker Koepp, who is also from Pomerania, looks for Johnson’s sophisticated literary voice in the landscapes of the region they both stem from.

Seestück

Following Landstück (2016), Volker Koepp's documentary Seestück is about the magical, natural setting of the Baltic Sea, its coasts and its people – including fishermen, seamen, scientists and young people on both the Baltic and Scandinavian shores. Conversations meander from Caspar David Friedrich to Copernicus, Rousseau and Kant, or simply life itself. Present concerns address the sea's threatened ecosystem and political frictions among the neighbouring countries. One universal truth applies for the small Baltic Sea too: The landscape is a window to the world.

Kohle als Honorar

Documentary shot in 2003 on coal miners who illegally and dangerously extract coal from unsafe tunnels to sell. Film only completed and released in 2016.

THE BORDER GUARD

Hermann Hoffstedt worked for 30 years as a controller at the GDR border. After the reunification Hermann was released. He refuses to accept the reality. Day after day he drives to the deserted border crossing point and does his work.