Thomas Heise’s monumental documentary film seems to have already become somewhat of a modern classic in certain circles – it has been reviewed by all major film outlets across the globe after a lengthy festival run, even making it on multiple end-of-the-year and even end-of-the-decade lists. Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit – which could be roughly translated to Homeland is a Space in Time – follows a century of German history across four generations in chronological order, starting from the interwar Berlin and Vienna and up to the first half of the last decade, which is reconstructed from the filmmaker’s personal archive of correspondences and diaries, rounded up at times with official documents, autobiographies, and CVs and even fragments of a Stasi secret police dossier. Thus, Heise reconstructed both Germany and Austria’s descent into Nazism, but also the heavy atmosphere of the postwar years which led to the separation of Germany, stretching through the entire duration of the East-German communist regime and culminating with the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Heise doesn’t illustrate these texts with official archives, however. Even though it begins on a color sequence, the film continues almost exclusively in black and white, featuring mostly images that are neutral (such as forests, fields, crowded U-Bahn and S-Bahn stations, dilapidated interiors, and so on), its central visual leitmotif being that of the train – a construction which at times is dotted with reproductions of personal documents or photographs.

Flavia Dima

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Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.

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