Anyone arriving at the Schwerin Film Festival by regional train is essentially already sitting in a cinema. The landscape rolls past like a long opening credits sequence: meadows, fields, birches, spruces and occasionally beeches. Grazing cows and calves, the occasional horse, and at dusk, the odd deer. The stations resemble commuter train stops. The former station buildings from the last century are disused. Tree-lined country roads and ditches crisscross the flat fields and meadows, the spring green sometimes broken by the gleaming black of photovoltaic panels.
In Red Stars upon the Field (Rote Sterne überm Feld), a German entry in the feature film competition of the 34th Schwerin Film Festival, director Laura Laabs stirs up history and stories in the seemingly idyllic town of Bad Kleinen in northwest Mecklenburg. A skeleton is recovered from the moor, and many possibilities arise as to who died here, how, and when. A Wehrmacht deserter who didn’t want to be sent to the losing war like his brothers? The former LPG leader who couldn’t save his cooperative from capitalism after the fall of the Wall? Or a supposed third person who died during a botched GSG9 operation at the Bad Kleinen train station in 1993?
The reference to Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History is intended to make the aesthetic chaos between historicising black-and-white images, sketches from the fall of the Wall in the style of a TV series and scenes from the anarchic contemporary political art scene plausible. It’s ironic that Rammstein singer Till Lindemann, who was embroiled in a MeToo scandal after filming (allegations, which he denies) and who plays the role of Erlkönig, is now among the “wreckage” in Benjamin’s sense, “hurled at the feet” of Laabs’ directorial debut, leading to discussions and threats of a boycott. The film, with its passion for cinematic experimentation and loving attention to the region and its people, does not deserve this.
Im Osten was Neues (which means: Something New in the East) is the programmatic title given by Loraine Blumenthal to her documentary, which premiered at the Filmkunstfest in Schwerin. It centres on Thomas, nicknamed “Eichi,” a dropout from the right-wing scene. People he would have racially abused and beaten decades earlier, he now coaches in soccer. The massive man with a bald head, countless tattoos, and an eyebrow piercing is a volunteer coach at the local soccer club FC Pio Torgelow. His protégés are young refugees, like Asad, from Chechnya, and Thomas, from Sierra Leone. Soccer brings these very different men together; it is the basis for the friendly and fatherly relationship Eichi maintains with them. He speaks openly about his past as a right-wing thug.
Blumenthal remains invisible as director, allowing only the images and original sound to speak for themselves as she follows Eichi onto the soccer field, films him talking to his wife and his five children, accompanies him to the tattoo studio, or joins him at festivals and away games. The camera also attends a meeting with the mayor, who would like to support the unemployed Torgelow resident but is unable to secure compensation for his volunteer work in her community. The film leaves open whether this is due to the AfD party receiving 27 percent of the election votes in Torgelow.
Unobtrusively and without moral finger-pointing, Im Osten was Neues tells the story of a man who, despite a difficult life history, shows courage and humanity. For her story about the coach of FC Pio Torgelow, Blumenthal was awarded the WIR Diversity Award and the Shot in MV Sponsorship Prize.
The audience at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Film Festival voted for Ich sterbe, kommst Du? (which means: I’m Dying, Will You Come?) as Best Film. Actor Benjamin Kramme’s feature film debut moved audiences with its sensitive and psychologically finely crafted story of a young mother suffering from cancer spending her final weeks in a hospice.
Lead actress Jennifer Sabel was particularly convincing as a dying woman torn between anger and rage, maternal care and the longing for life. The actress at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Theater co-wrote the screenplay, which noticeably reflected the director’s own experiences as a male hospice nurse.
The film was shot at the Bernstorf Castle Hospice near Grevesmühlen, which certainly contributed to the story’s authenticity. For his courage in tackling the taboo subject of dying and death in a poignant film story, Kramme was honoured with the DEFA Foundation’s Award in Schwerin.
by Hadwiga Fertsch-Röver
Edited by Amber Wilkinson
@FIPRESCI 2025