Wo der Wind so kalt weht

“How cold the wind blows in our beautiful Westerwald”, the locals like to sing with tears in their eyes. But feeling at home in Germany can be a thorny issue, because this also is the song the Wehrmacht soldiers sang as they marched east. Perhaps that’s why it’s almost considered improper to make a film (apart from satires) about provincial Germany and its – usually considered backward – idea of home. In this respect, Janina Jung shows courage when she returns to her home village – she won a Golden Dove for this once before – without letting her views be clouded by emotional closeness or intellectual distance. One senses a familiarity, though, for apart from impressions of the village over the course of a year, the film was shot exclusively at the kitchen table. You don’t invite strangers there, and you talk frankly. Jung interviewed various villagers – old and young, long-time residents and recent new arrivals, Germans and migrants – about the same themes: the village community and how it is changing, nature and landscape, money and job, love and marriage, language, tradition, and faith. An intelligent montage turns this into a polyphonic snapshot of the atmosphere in provincial Germany in 2013. Full of funny as well as bitter moments, which combine with the theme of strangeness that runs through the film to remind us how problematic it is: home.“ Grit Lemke (DOK Leipzig)