Erster Verlust

Followed by a talk with Maxim Dessau, Peter Badel, moderated by Philip Zengel

Summer, 1942. When the farmer Heinrich is drafted into the army, his farm’s existence comes under threat because his wife Kathrin and his sister Frieda cannot manage the work alone. The Nazi authorities force a group of Soviet prisoners of war, closer to death than life, to work in the village. Stepping into her brother’s shoes, Frieda ensures that one of the prisoners is sent to work on her farm and commands him with an iron fist. Kathrin feels defenseless against Frieda’s emotional coldness and hides her loneliness, while her feelings of resentment about her own existence grow. Director Maxim Dessau took a considerable personal risk with this, his debut feature film, after he was forced to abandon his previous project ‘Schnauzer’ for political reasons years before. Rather than conforming to popular taste, he and his co-creators made radical aesthetic choices, eschewing the standard DEFA practice of post-synchronization in favor of original sound and choosing a fragmentary narrative style captured by enthralling black-and-white cinematography.

Maxim Dessau was born in Berlin in 1954. He studied film directing at the Film and Television Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg and went on to become a masterclass student at the Academy of Arts in Berlin and a guest lecturer at the city’s Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts.

Peter Badel was born in 1953 in Berlin, Germany, and is a documentary filmmaker and cinematographer who specializes in theatrically released documentaries, feature films and television productions.

Philip Zengel studied communication science and management in Erfurt, Oslo and Leipzig. He has worked for the DEFA Foundation in Berlin for many years, beginning during his studies, and has headed its public relations department since 2020.