VOM VERSCHWINDEN

An eleven-year-old boy tells three stories about his family: that of his great-grandmother Ida, that of his grandmother Angelika and that of his father. The personal fates of all three family members bear witness to different phases of East German history after the Second World War. The shots of the natural landscape of Stubnitz on the island of Rügen, where the family settled after fleeing East Prussia, form a sharp contrast to the people’s stories. Until the coastal landscape itself becomes the subject of the story. The seemingly untouched nature of the beech forests on the Baltic coast is both a place of refuge and a place of remembrance for experiences full of violence and trauma. In his film, artist Sven Johne explores the personal consequences of social and ecological changes in the world. And in passing, he defines the East as a historical space between a violent past and an uncertain future.