1993 documentary film by Volker Koepp

1973 film directed by Volker Koepp

1978 film directed by Volker Koepp

1975 film directed by Volker Koepp

Meetings with readers, acquaintances and contemporaries of writer Uwe Johnson at the places where he lived. Volker Koepp, who is also from Pomerania, looks for Johnson’s sophisticated literary voice in the landscapes of the region they both stem from.

加達路孚的冬天很冷，風很大，孩子很野。曾是普魯士統治範圍內的一條繁華村落，二戰後卻被劃為加裡寧格勒的一部份，德國人自此被趕走，蘇聯人民被安排遷居於此。轉眼間，曾經風光的村落變成百廢待興的荒涼之地。有能力離開的人，早已離開；留著的，除了那些日夜酗酒的成年人，就只有一群比成年人還要成熟的小大人。這些野孩子，在極度貧乏的環境下茁壯生存，像極早上七八點的和煦太陽。 The film tells the story of the Kaliningrad region and its inhabitants. A landscape full of history. After World War II the former Prussian province turned into a Russian exclave. The film is dedicated to a generation, born in the 90’s, and familiar with the Soviet Union and East Prussia only from school books. With the calamity of unemployment and the ravages of alcohol, many children are left to their own devices, in landscapes that are returning to the wild. Games, dreams, solidarity, and the fierce will to live defy a forsaken world.

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.

The sons of Elizabeth Paetzold reveal, little by little, what they have in common. And their story is a real, living history lesson of Pomerania - throughout history inhabited by Kashubians, Germans & Poles. Over twenty years had to pass before their true identities were confirmed. All the sons were born in the Paetzold family country manor - a formerly German area of Pomerania, near Danzig, which became Polish again & definitely-so after mid 1945, just 9 months after the last of the brothers was born. Elizabeth could only take 2 of the children out of the area before the Red Army took over. The other children remained in Polish orphanages, 2 of them adopted by Polish families. During this meeting, what the brothers call their "last reunion" - the eldest was born in 1938 & the youngest in late 1944, interviews with all the sons, their wives, partner, children, in-laws & neighbors participate...

波蘭城市「斯塞新」，舊名「斯德丁」，導演的出生地。此地在1945年被蘇聯占領之前，屬於德國。導演多年來在斯塞新與柏林間不停往返，無數人物成為他記錄的對象。這回他重訪舊地、尋訪老友，草木依舊，但人民的生活卻因戰爭不若以往。導演以影像對比今昔，以個人回憶寫下時代及地景更迭的時光軌跡。

「薩爾馬提亞」介於立陶宛、波蘭、烏克蘭與摩爾多瓦之間，是歐洲的地理中心，其隱含的複雜歷史與認同，多次成為導演的創作題材。導演行旅於灰色邊界之間，探訪多位曾經的拍攝對象，藉著「你從那裡來？」、「未來想去何方？」、「覺得自己是誰？」這些簡單卻恆久的問題，譜寫出一幅多采的肖像風景畫。

導演沿著波羅的海沿岸展開拍攝，鏡頭對準與汪洋為鄰的水手、漁夫、學者、婦女與當地居民。各色人等從生命經驗出發，訴說自己與這片海的故事，哲思、藝術、科學和生活裡都蘊含著他們對「海」的觀點，話題更離不開國族歷史、生態環境和政治局勢；而所謂「海」的風景，也隨著四季、時代不斷變化。