Gehen und Bleiben

‘Uwe Johnson. Consequences of War’ - this is the subtitle of Volker Koepp's new work, which is of course not “just” a portrait of the writer born in Pomerania in 1934, who emigrated to the West at the end of the 1950s, wrote one of the most important novels of the 20th century, Anniversaries, and died in England at the age of less than 50. Rather, his person and work are the starting point for another associative and curious expedition through those landscapes and to those people whose stories have characterised the filmmaker's own work for decades. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine repeatedly form reference points in this lush and multi-faceted film, which once again demonstrates Koepp's special flair for making his subject tell his story. (Florian Widegger)