In Times of Fading Light (2017) In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts

Director: Matti Geschonneck
Writers: Wolfgang Kohlhaase (screenplay), Eugen Ruge (novel)
Stars: Bruno Ganz, Alexander Fehling, Sylvester Groth

In early autumn of ’89 the Powileits, an East-German family, celebrate the 90th birthday of patriarch Wilhelm who is a former resistance fighter, returned expatriate and incorrigible Stalinist. His wife Charlotte is hosting the festivities where neighbors, acquaintances and dignitaries show up, deliver flowers and give speeches as if nothing were amiss in the outside world. But someone is missing and of all people he’s the only one who in Charlotte’s opinion knows how to set up the extending table for the cold buffet; Sascha, her grandson. No one suspects that Sascha defected to the West just a few days ago…

Through the eyes of Sascha’s father Kurt – a historian, Gulag survivor, now unhappily married to the Russian Irina – we experience the “Time of Fading Light” as a snapshot of a radical personal and political change, which is denied and experienced differently by each person affected. “In Times of Fading Light” recounts the disintegration of a family and political system; a wide panorama painted on a small scale, told with laconic humor, thus allowing history to be understood through family history.

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