Lawinen der Erinnerung

Dominik Graf originally contacted writer-director Oliver Storz because he planned to make a film of his semi-autobiographical novel Die Freibadclique (2008). But it didn’t work out that way: the two TV auteurs, roughly a generation apart, immediately liked each other, and when the older turned out to be terminally ill, the younger quickly raised money for an essay documentary about: one man’s journey from the ruins of the Third Reich into the era of post-war reconstruction; the beginnings of a new art in a new nation; opportunities rarely taken and too often forfeited; the many hopes crushed and the very few dreams actually realised.
But Lawinen der Erinnerung is more than a testimony-rooted memoir: It’s a forlorn look back in rage and tenderness; a meditation on a culture and aesthetic of self-doubt and civil scepticism lost; and a scathing indictment of how we betrayed the best and most useful of what this generation created.