Berlinale Spotlight – Forum: Chronos – Flow of Time

“Sarmatische Zeit” (Sarmatian Time) is the name of a poetry collection by Johannes Bobrowski, which becomes a personal, lyrical leitmotif for Volker Koepp in this visually striking, far-reaching exploration of the region between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, along the Memel, Dnister and Pruth rivers. It is a place of different origins, longings and crimes: a melting pot for myriad cultures and affiliations, a point of reference and refuge for over half a century in the work of the great chronicler and the setting of repeated cruelties and destruction. Returning to his own oeuvre with companions old and new becomes a simultaneous process of looking back and bringing things up to date.

Like the arms of a delta, connections to German history and the entire European context are created, between past and present. And for a long while, time seems to stand terribly still within this flow, for since the start of the Russian war against Ukraine in 2022, the echo of the experience of violence inscribed into this region becomes impossible to ignore. What originates in poems about the Memel region develops into a monumental contemplation about people in time and space.

Volker Koepp:

Born in 1944 in Stettin and raised in Berlin, after training as a machinist, Volker Koepp studied at the Technische Universität, Dresden, and the Film University Babelsberg. From 1970 to 1991, he was employed as a documentary director by DEFA Studio. He has since worked as a freelance director, writer, producer and teacher, and has been a guest at the Berlinale Forum multiple times. In addition to various awards for his film work, he received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class in 2014 and became an honorary member of the German Film Academy in 2021.