Einst süsse Heimat
Beyond the forest
Gerald Igor Hauzenberger / Austria / 2007 / 75 min / Colour
Italian premiere
At the foot of the Transylvanian mountains live the last survivors of a German minority, the Saxons, and of an Austrian one, the Landlers. These are people who, with difficulty, have kept alive their own language and traditions in small villages of striking and melancholy beauty where progress seems to have come to a standstill thirty years ago. Two elderly people are the protagonists of this film. Johann Schuff, a solitary farmer, who experienced World War II; he signed up with the Waffen-SS and inherited a doctrine from which he is now unable to distance himself. 65 kilometers away lives Marie Huber who, on the other hand, suffered for five long years in a Russian concentration camp. These two protagonists, one so different from the other, seem to have in common only the thought of death, a dramatic metaphor for the death of the culture of which they are the final heirs.
Gerald Igor Hauzenberger
Credits
Language Saxon Dialect, Landler Dialect Subject Gerald Igor Hauzenberger Cinematography Dominik Spritzendorfer, Marco F. Zimprich Sound Nina Slatosch Editing Michael Palm, Gerald Igor Hauzenberger Producer Gerald Igor Hauzenberger Production company Golden Girls Filmproduktion