Elisabeth Wilms

May 8, 1945 – 11:00 p.m. – the guns fall silent on German soil. The greatest war the world has ever seen comes to an end for the Germans along the Rhine and Ruhr. The Zero Hour—Liberation Day—becomes both history and myth. During this time, people like Elisabeth Wilms, a baker’s wife from Dortmund, and Friedrich Lieffertz, a restaurateur from Cologne, become chroniclers. They capture the final days of the war with their cameras. The documentary by Franziska Rempe and Lukas Hoffmann begins with this so-called “Hour Zero.” Along the Rhine and Ruhr, life is gradually returning to the cities. And across Europe, thousands are now making their way back to their homes.

Elisabeth Wilms(1905-1981), the baker's wife from Dortmund-Asseln, made more than 150 films from the early 1940s until her death in August 1981. She not only recorded the everyday life of her immediate surroundings, but also life in the bomb-destroyed city of Dortmund and the later reconstruction after 1945 with the camera and thus captured it for posterity. But there are also industrial, commercial and travel films as well as reports in her work.