D'Allemagne(s) et d'Ailleurs

Germany—a "normal" country that has moved beyond guilt, tamed its demons, and finally achieved inner unity—would have become a country like any other. Is it a coincidence that the guilty consciences haunting the past are often those of writers?

Christoph Hein, Wladimir Kaminer, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Bernhard Schlink: four major names in German literature—or how does history become an integral part of the self? How is the history of twentieth-century Germany embodied—generating meaning, sensations, and dreams—in the lives of these authors from such diverse backgrounds?

All four write works that are both popular and sophisticated. Each, in their own way, embodies several chapters of German history: their lives make them living archives.

This is the case with the painful mark of Nazism on the life and work of Bernhard Schlink; the East-West bloc division in the work of Christoph Hein; the Turkish emigration of the 1960s and 1970s in that of Emine Sevgi Özdamar; and the emigration of Russian Jews at the end of the communist era in the work of Wladimir Kaminer.

An Olivier Morel documentary.

Belongs to the "Europe of Writers" collection

Co-produced and broadcast by Arte France

Director : Olivier Morel

DOP : Sarah Blum

Length : 52 min

Editor : Matthieu Augustin

Sound engineer : Erik Ménard

Subtitles : "Europe of Writers" collection