Issues bloquées

Life histories from Neustadt. Life on the edge. A longing for love. Life never works perfectly and is never how you expected it would be. What is normal? What lies slumbering under the blankets, exhausted by day-to-day conflicts? The film is an observation in Germany on the verge of the new century.

"The number of ethnic and cultural conflicts is increasing and therefore also violence. A radicalised modern lifestyle and the associated rapidity of change are driving society apart. That still sounds abstract, and indeed abstract issues aren’t disturbing. I read those words by Wilhelm Heitmeyer in Die Zeit newspaper in January last year. Those sentences disturb me. The question of what constitutes normality and what it is that lies slumbering under the blankets, exhausted by day-to-day conflicts, can probably only be answered by a documentary film, a search for answers through images. ‘Exhaustion’ is the word that today’s cities are screaming. That is one aspect. The other in this film is Brecht’s Lesebuch für Stadtbewohner. My memories of this text are greater than the actual number of his words. It contains everything. Particularly if you append Brecht’s poem Nach Unten to it. The film explains the same processes in a different manner"."
(Thomas Heise)