Herzsprung

Summary

Herzsprung, a village in Brandenburg, just after reunification. Factory cook Johanna loses her job and soon after becomes a widow when her husband kills himself. The mother of two small children gets new energy from her friend Lisa, a hairdresser, and her feelings for an African-German who runs a snack bar at the edge of town. But while Johanna's father, a concentration camp survivor, enjoys a late-in-life new love, Johanna and her boyfriend become the target of young neo-Nazis…

For her narrative debut, DEFA documentary filmmaker Helke Misselwitz joined with Thomas Wilkening to found one of the first private East German film production companies. Developed and shot against the background of xenophobic attacks in Rostock and Hoyerswerda in 1991/92, Herzsprung displayed a keen feel for the mood during unification's radical social upheavals, as well as a sense of historical consciousness. As one of very few East German contemporary films, it was – aesthetically, feminist, inter-cultural – completely in tune with its time. Consciously playing on "ostalgia", it employed eastern European songs from "Russian discos" and references to motifs from old DEFA fairy tale films.

Source: 74. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)