Screening at the Eibenhof Cultural Barn
Winter adé is considered a cult film among film connoisseurs . A train journey, a conversation in the compartment – this is how Winter Adé begins. In 1988, one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Helke Misselwitz travels by train from Zwickau to Rügen and meets women from a wide variety of backgrounds along the way: a briquette worker, two punkers, a Berlin economist, an 85-year-old celebrating her diamond wedding, a single mother in charge of a children’s village, and many others.
In haunting black and white images and with a sensitive, subjective camera, the film tells of their lives under real existing socialism, of desires, frustration, everyday strategies and the gap between the promise of equality and reality. The conversations are open, poetic, political. They capture a mood, a society in upheaval, shortly before the end.
The train becomes a symbol of movement and change. Winter Adé, an ambiguous title, hints at this. The country is on the brink of a turning point and women are beginning to raise their voices. The film was digitally restored in 2023 and is now regarded as a classic East German documentary.
We are delighted to welcome filmmaker Helke Misselwitz to the festival.
©TONY VAHL