Cold Homeland

In late 1990 times are changing in Zehdenick, Brandenburg: Russian troops are leaving, the German Reunification brings euphoria and new hope, but unemployment rises steadily.

In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Four years later—the Islamic calendar's year 1362—, director Volker Koepp visited Kabul and neighboring provinces. Koepp met a cross-section of people, such as soldiers, intellectuals, kids, and nomads, and with sensitive intensity told stories of their daily lives in the turmoil of an “undeclared war.” This travelogue, which was undertaken with the GDR’s consent, took a political risk because it expresses Koepp’s doubt that conflicts can be solved through military invention.

Chernivtsi, an out-of-the-way city in the middle of Europe. It was once part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy as the capital of the crown province of Bukowina. People of many different nationalities, languages, and cultures lived here together: Ukrainians, Romanians, Germans, Poles, Huzulians. Almost half of the population of Chernivtsi, once amounting to 150,000 inhabitants, were Jews. The southern part of Bukowina is now part of Romania, the north, with Czernowitz/Chernivtsi, belongs to the Ukraine. Six years ago Volker Koepp made his film Herr Zwilling und Frau Zuckermann there. Dieses Jahr in Chernivtsi returns there with emigrants and their descendants.

24-hour television documentary about Berlin and its inhabitants, reporting in real time on the everyday lives of more than 50 protagonists from a wide range of professions, social classes, religions and ethnicities.

A biographical documentary about the Bulgarian born film director Slatan Dudow (1903–1963).

In early 1945, the mother Elisabeth Paetzold flees from the Red Army from West Prussia towards the west with the two oldest of her four sons. Taking all the children at the same time seems too dangerous to her, so she leaves her two youngest in the hope of catching them up later, in the care of grandparents. In post-war Poland, she sets out in search of them, but she no longer succeeds in uniting them all. Only now, in this documentary, a reunion takes place. And there are five stories about the common family history audible that is so incredible, but not rare...

A documentary about the village Kienitz at the river Oder, about the people, their life, their history.

Comedy drama about one of life's perennial losers who finally strikes it lucky with a beautiful woman, but not before experiencing the usual seemingly endless pitfalls.

The "Curonian Spit" is a 98 kilometre long sand dune peninsula that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. The width of the spit between the lagoon′s beach and the beach of the Baltic Sea often amounts to no more than several hundred metres. In this film, documentary filmmaker Volker Koepp portrays this unique region that in its history was again and again subjected to shifting borders and the resulting social upheavals due to its geographical location between Germany and Russia.

In the west of Ukraine, not far from the border to Romania, there is a faraway European city: Chernivtsi. It was once the centre of Jewish culture in the Bukowina, a border area characterized over centuries by a multi-cultural mixture of peoples. Here, Ukrainians, Poles, Romanians, Germans and Jews lived side by side. Volker Koepp’s film focuses on Mr. Zwilling and Mrs. Zuckermann, two of the last few Jews born in the old Chernivtsi/Czernowitz. They share a friendship but also their love for the German language. Mr. Zwilling visits 90-year-old Mrs. Zuckermann daily in the early hours of the evening. They talk about old times, about shared events, about politics and literature and the worries of everyday life.

Ernst is a student in Hamburg around 1900 and leads a life like many other young people. In his free time, he roams the colorful metropolis with his buddy Karl. After school, he helps his father, whose business he is to inherit one day. Ernst has many questions about the world and life, but it is difficult to find satisfactory answers... At this time, nobody suspects that he will go down in the history books as the workers' leader Ernst Thälmann.

Documentary about the small city of Rheinsberg, once the summer residence of Prussian princes. Average working class people comment on the history of this special place.

Documentary about the German poet Erich Weinert.

The film tells the story of the East Prussian landscape and its inhabitants. At one time Germans, Poles, Lithuanians and Jews lived here alongside and with one another. After World War II and the expulsion of Germans by Stalin, the Prussian province turned into a Russian enclave. Volker Koepp’s fourth film about the Kaliningrad region is dedicated to the generation, born in the '90s, and familiar with the Soviet Union and East Prussia only from school books. Parents and grandparents who were forcefully resettled to where they are now have never really felt at home. In the meantime they have hopelessly succumbed to unemployment and alcohol. Their children can only rely on themselves. Older siblings look after the younger ones, they play with what lies around, and the girl Ljuda can’t wait to finally turn eighteen, to be able to take her brothers home from the orphanage. The film has much confidence in the children. But what will become of them?

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.

Wittstock an der Dosse is located in the German state Mark Brandenburg, apx. 90 kilometers from Berlin. Volker Koepp came into the town in 1974 to interview women and girls about their work in the textile industry, their spare-time occupations, about their thoughts and feelings.